“၂၀၁၀ ကမၻာ့ လူအခြင့္အေရး၏ တိုက္ပြဲႏွစ္” ျမန္မာ့ေသြးအနီေရာင္ မညစ္ေစနဲ ့။ စစ္က်ြန္ဘ၀လႊတ္ေျမာက္ၾကဖို ့ ေတာ္လွန္ွေရးသို ့့ အသင့္ျပင္

Tuesday, June 07, 2011

Burma-China alliance threatens ASEAN unity

Burma is asking China to back its bid for chairmanship of partnership in 2014
By Jonathan Manthorpe, Vancouver Sun June 6, 2011
Myanmar President Thein Sein (right) and his Chinese counterpart Hu Jintao inspect a military honour guard during a visit to China in late May.

Myanmar President Thein Sein (right) and his Chinese counterpart Hu Jintao inspect a military honour guard during a visit to China in late May.
Photograph by: Frederic J. Brown, AFP, Getty Images, Vancouver Sun

Burma has marked its unconvincing transition from military regime to civilian government by delivering a couple of slaps round the face to its nine long-suffering partners in the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN).

The actions by the Burmese regime raise serious questions over whether ASEAN will be able to achieve its objective of creating a fully integrated community by 2015 with a high degree of economic unification and common policies on key regional and global issues.

Burma's maverick activities come at a time when ASEAN is not only facing another internal friction with the Thailand-Cambodia border conflict, but is under pressure from China, which appears to be pursuing a divide-and-conquer strategy to disrupt association unity.

Burma's general-turned-President Thein Sein managed the one-two punch while leading a large delegation of ministers and officials from the new regime to Beijing last week.

First he announced that his government fully backs China in its long-running dispute with ASEAN members Vietnam, Philippines, Brunei and Malaysia over the ownership of clusters of islands and reefs in the South China Sea.

This craven piece of sycophancy was not only a gross act of disloyalty to Thein Sein's fellow ASEAN members, it flies in the face of a 2002 agreement between the association and China on how to manage their dispute.

Then Thein Sein added a further insult by asking China's President Hu Jintao to assist Burma to get the 2014 chairmanship of ASEAN.

The implication is that Thein Sein wants Beijing to use its regional economic and political muscle to press ASEAN to guarantee Burma the host status that has only been pencilled in at the moment.

Thein Sein's unequivocal siding with China will undoubtedly reinforce the qualms and misgivings several ASEAN leaders have about whether Burma has the political maturity and administrative capacity to play the roll of association figurehead in 2014.

ASEAN faced down much international criticism in 1997 when it admitted Burma, which its regime calls Myanmar, in a purposeful piece of intimidation aimed at the country's many minority groups, suggesting they have a junior and servile status to the majority Burmans.

The military regime was under multiple sanctions and embargoes for its appalling human rights record, and political suppression symbolized by the detention of opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi.

But ASEAN leaders maintained the "constructive engagement" with the junta was the way forward.

It was not successful. Late last year elections were held in Burma on the basis of a new constitution that leaves all ultimate power in the hands of the military, which also has control of key ministries and an allocated block of seats in parliament.

Very many of the most senior positions, such as that of President Thein Sein, are held by military men who hung up their uniforms to join the "civilian" government.

Thein Sein took up office at the end of March.

Beijing has been lavishing attention on Burma in recent years to the extent that the country is often called an "economic colony" of China.

As well as investing heavily in Burma's abundant natural resources, China sees its southeast Asian neighbour as an important strategic partner in foiling what Beijing sees as efforts by the United States to contain China's growing regional influence.

China is in the process of building a pipeline from Burma's western coast in the Bay of Bengal to China's southwestern Yunnan province. This will allow China to import oil from the Middle East without tankers having to pass through the Malacca Strait choke point between Singapore and Indonesia.

Burma's expressions of loyalty to Beijing come as China is acting more aggressively toward other claimants to sovereignty over areas of the South China Sea than it has in years.

This coincides with evidence from ongoing exploration that there are much greater submarine oil and gas reserves than was previously suspected.

There was a serious incident early in March when the Philippine oil exploration ship, MV Veritas Voyager, was harassed by Chinese Navy patrol boats at Reed Bank off the coast of the Philippines.

Then, a week ago, Chinese patrol boats cut the sonar cable of an exploration ship, the Binh Minh 2, working for the state-owned Petro Vietnam company.

The encounter took place 120 nautical miles off the central Vietnamese coast and 600 kilometres south of China's Hainan island.

Beijing has sent curt warnings to both the Hanoi and Manila governments not to challenge China's maritime territorial claims, which are based on the view of imperial Chinese emperors hundreds of years ago that all surrounding countries were vassal states.

jmanthorpe@vancouversun.com
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