How popular resistance and civil society in Myanmar defied China’s Belt and Road programme

The Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) is a transcontinental infrastructure programme launched by the Chinese government a decade ago that advances Beijing’s strategic economic and political goals at home and beyond China’s borders. These ambitions, however, met with unanticipated setbacks in Myanmar in the 2010s. Why were BRI’s development projects in Myanmar beset by so many challenges and disruptions? In my newly published, open access book Defying Beijing: Societal Resistance to the Belt and Road in Myanmar, I examine instances when the infrastructural megaprojects of the BRI faced unexpected resistance in the host country. Beijing and its state-owned enterprises often disregarded the influence of resistant societal stakeholders—including impacted communities, activists, and social elites—in rolling out the development projects. Officials and investors in China were unaccustomed to such friction in a domestic environment with comparatively weak civil society and firmer hands guiding public opinion, and were quick to blame Western, especially American, interference. However, although a rapprochement was underway between the United States and Myanmar, I argue that it was resistance by societal stakeholders that changed the course of events amid Myanmar’s political liberalisation from 2011 to 2021. Kachin people hold placards during a protest held in April 2019 in Waingmaw, Kachin State opposing the Myitsone dam project, which was backed by investment from China as part of Beijing’s Belt and Road Initiative. If it had been completed according to plan, the dam would have been the fifteenth largest hydroelectric power plant in the world. (Photo: EPA-EFE/SI THU MKN) Defying Beijing studies the interactions among Myanmar’s societal stakeholders, Naypyitaw, and Beijing in the implementation of the BRI projects throughout the country during the Thein Sein administration (2011-2016), including the Myitsone dam near the Kachin State capital, the Letpadaung copper mine in Sagaing Region, and the China-Myanmar oil and gas pipelines with starting points on the Rakhine State coast. The Myitsone dam was shelved by the nominally civilian government under Thein Sein in 2011. The Letpadaung copper mine was suspended for a time before resuming under an agreement revised in Naypyitaw’s favour in 2013. By contrast, the dual pipeline was implemented according to initial agreements, with Naypyitaw repeatedly petitioning Beijing to renegotiate the pipeline transmission fees in Myanmar’s favour, but to no avail. This divergence in the outcomes of the three leading BRI projects is surprising, and it is even more noteworthy that Beijing was sometimes willing to accommodate Myanmar officials’ reneging on previously agreed terms. While Defying Beijing emphasises the role of societal stakeholders in state-coordinated investments, it does not insist that social opposition alone was a sufficient condition for project failure. Once an international economic agreement is concluded, the signatory states are obligated to honour it, and a breach of contract will entail economic and political repercussions. Myanmar entered into the BRI agreements during a period of military dictatorship, and the emergence of new social forces during a period of democratisation changed the operational environments of BRI projects in unexpected ways, sometimes transforming economic cooperation into dissension. While impacted communities, supported by activists, called for review or even cancellation of the projects, Beijing demanded that they move forward. The Thein Sein administration had to strike a balance between taking heed of domestic public opinion as it sought to compete in open and free elections, and honouring Naypyitaw’s international obligations—a conundrum that Defying Beijing refers to as an “audience cost dilemma”. Naypyitaw had its own policy preferences, and it strategically capitalised on domestic constraints to move closer to its policy goals. In the case of the Myitsone dam, the Thein Sein administration appeared to have a change of heart, unilaterally announcing the suspension of the project. Claiming their hands were tied, Naypyitaw tried to convince Beijing that implementing the original agreement would be impossible. In the case of the Letpadaung copper mine case, the Thein Sein administration favoured continuing the project despite understanding that it would be politically costly. As such, it signalled an immovable bargaining position on the dispute, and secured more favourable terms as a condition for resuming the project. In the China-Myanmar oil pipeline case, Naypyitaw simply failed to persuade Beijing to renegotiate the transmission fees. Any disruption of a BRI project would undermine Beijing’s prestige on the international stage. The oil pipeline case demonstrated that Beijing was sometimes in a position to reject Naypyitaw’s demands. Considering Beijing’s ability and willingness to bring considerable pressure to bear against Naypyitaw to honour its agreements, its concessions in project disputes should not be taken for granted. Beijing showed it would accommodate constraints in its host country when it was compelled to acknowledge Naypyitaw’s audience cost dilemma, as demonstrated by broad popular opposition to a given bilateral agreement. Beijing therefore showed its willingness to make revisions to the copper mine contract that were more favourable to its counterpart, and to suspend a project entirely and leave room for dispute settlement in the case of the dam. Beijing’s willingness to shift its diplomatic strategy to engage with local stakeholders reflected its recognition that a public outcry could be enough to derail a project. Defying Beijing also discusses the level of transparency surrounding BRI projects under the administration of the National League for Democracy (NLD) from 2016 to 2021. Counterintuitively, the NLD-led government systematically excluded societal stakeholders from the negotiations, challenging the assumption that a more democratic government would be more transparent and accountable in bilateral economic cooperation. To avoid being constrained by public opinion, longtime pro-democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi’s government in fact minimised the scope of information available to the public. While the Myanmar Sustainable Development Plan, new investment laws, and the online Project Bank gave the appearance of rectifying the opacity of bilateral economic agreements criticised under previous governments, in reality the weak enforcement of disclosure standards and limited transparency did not align with the NLD government’s policy objectives. The NLD government systematically evaded public scrutiny in its cooperation with Beijing on BRI projects, and societal stakeholders were excluded from the Myitsone dam renegotiations. Aung San Suu Kyi—who had assumed the title of state counsellor in the NLD government—tried to conceal a discussion she had had with Chinese foreign minister Wang Yi about a project dispute in 2016. Her government established a Myitsone commission to allay fears and controversy about the dam project, but did not communicate the commission’s findings to the public. The Yangon new city project also revealed the NLD administration’s top-down governance approach. The controversial China Communications Construction Company, Ltd. (CCCC) made a successful bid via a “Swiss Challenge” process for the 1.5 billion-dollar project. By this process, other companies had to submit counter-proposals to compete with CCCC in the bidding process, but CCCC enjoyed the leverage to match the funding amount or forgo the project if a competitor offered a lower bid. The head of Yangon Region’s government Phyo Min Thein bypassed the NLD-dominated regional legislature in implementing the project, prompting legislators to raise questions about its transparency and legitimacy. Civil society groups also raised questions about flooding risk from the project and the adequacy of the mitigation plan. The civilian-led government later backed down, organising town hall meetings to address public concerns, and agreed to anti-monopoly measures to induce more competition in the project’s development. During the Saffron Revolution of 2007 to 2008, critics of the ruling military junta in Myanmar accused China of propping up the regime with investments, diplomatic support, and arms supplies. History has repeated itself since the 2021 coup, with the people of Myanmar again condemning Beijing’s renewed support for the current military dictatorship. Nonetheless, the Chinese state-owned conglomerate CITIC Group chose to proceed with investment and participation in the massive deep sea port and Special Economic Zone project in Kyaukphyu, Rakhine State, undeterred by pro-democracy activists’ criticism and the volatile political conditions in the state. Chinese investors in the project seem to have concluded that they can rely on the junta’s endorsement alone in implementing international development projects, ignoring the lessons learned during the reform period. Safety concerns required me to anonymise the names of my interviewees in Defying Beijing. The book could not have been completed without the generous support of public intellectuals, activists, villagers, and ordinary citizens in Myanmar, and I regret that I cannot acknowledge them by name. However, I would like to pay tribute to Ko Jimmy and U Nyan Win who perished because of the 2021 military coup. It was extremely kind of Ko Jimmy and U Nyan Win, as leaders of the 88 Generation and the NLD respectively, to share their views on China-Myanmar relations with me, a no-name researcher. I hope for justice to prevail with the success of the Spring Revolution. Debby Chan is a lecturer in the Australian Centre on China in the World and the Crawford School of Public Policy at the Australian National University. She researches social responses to China’s economic statecraft. Her open-access book Defying Beijing: Societal Resistance to the Belt and Road in Myanmar is available on the ANU Press: https://press.anu.edu.au/publications/defying-beijing

How popular resistance and civil society in Myanmar defied China’s Belt and Road programme

Academic researcher Debby Chan explains in a new book how Myanmar’s impacted communities, activists, and other ‘societal stakeholders’ stopped or changed the developmental course of China’s infrastructure megaprojects in their country

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