The EconomistFebruary 6th 2021 BriefingMyanmar’s coup 172 acted by the president—albeit a rather
fresh one, as Myint Swe, a retired general,
had been elevated from the vice-presiden-
cy only minutes earlier, following the de-
tention of the former president, Win Myint
of the nld. Ms Suu Kyi’s detention is justi-
fied by the charge that she had improperly
imported walkie-talkies—a charge which
puts her at risk of being barred from office.
Most of the other politicians originally de-
tained have since been released.
The commander-in-chief will try to
“position [his administration] as a more ef-
fective government, relative to the nld,”
says Tom Kean, editor-in-chief of Frontier,
a magazine based in Yangon. General Min
Aung Hlaing has said that his government
will focus on battling covid-19, boosting
the economy and brokering peace with in-
surgent forces.
International sanctions might put paid
to his hopes of economic growth—but they
are not a foregone conclusion. Since 2019
America has had specific sanctions aimed
at General Min Aung Hlaing and three other
officers associated with the pogroms
against Rohingyas. President Joe Biden has
threatened to reimpose broader sanctions
lifted after the elections of 2010. Such sanc-
tions might well, as they did during the
years of military rule, hurt the poorest
members of a highly unequal society most.
Myanmar’s army rulers and the business
networks and smuggling rackets they pa-
tronise, used to such constraints, would be
much less affected.
One of those sceptical about a policy of
isolation may well be the Indo-Pacific tsar
in Mr Biden’s National Security Council,
Kurt Campbell, who from 2009 on orches-
trated America’s rapprochement with
Myanmar under Barack Obama. On past
form he will argue that engagement with
Myanmar is the only hope of getting the
democratic process back on track.
Part of Mr Campbell’s strategy in the
2010s was to play on the Tatmadaw’s wor-
ries about China’s power over their isolated
country. Those fears, like the other drivers
behind that opening-up, are still apparent
today. The army is wary of Chinese support
for insurgencies along their shared border.
Chinese interests are deeply embedded in
the country’s dysfunctional economy, easi-
ly discerned in arms sales, infrastructure
projects, an army of small traders and bor-
der enclaves that are havens for gambling,
smuggling and money-laundering.
The fact that Chinese state media de-
scribed the coup as no more than a “major
cabinet reshuffle” suggests that the Chi-
nese government, which had been wooing
Ms Suu Kyi, is keen to be on good terms
with the new regime. Myanmar offers it a
strategically crucial direct route to the Bay
of Bengal and the Indian Ocean beyond—a
way for China’s imports of oil and gas to by-
pass the potential chokehold of the Malac-
ca Straits and for exports to be shipped out
of its inner provinces. In time it could be a
military foothold, too.
The physical manifestation of these
strategic desires is the China-Myanmar
Economic Corridor, over $21bn-worth of
country-spanning projects including a
railway, oil and gas pipelines and a deep-
water port at Kyaukphyu. These projects
were troubled even before the uncertainty
injected by the coup. It is far from clear how
Myanmar can pay for them all. And the
links run through the territories of various
ethnic minorities, including, in Rakhine,
the territory where the ethnic cleansing of
Rohingyas took place. Chinese-backed
construction is more likely to inflame ex-
isting ethnic conflicts in such places than
to bring peace and development.The wars at home
While outsiders vie for favour and seek to
engineer an outcome they prefer, political
opposition inside Myanmar may be weak.
On February 3rd staff at 70 hospitals in 30
towns went on strike. The following day, a
small demonstration took place in Manda-
lay, Myanmar’s second city. The All Burma
Federation of Student Unions, which
played a role in the seminal protest move-
ment which saw Ms Suu Kyi emerge as a
leader in 1988, is planning protests across
the country, according to Wai Yan Phyoe
Moe, the organisation’s vice-chair. But the
nlditself is in disarray. “Without [Ms Suu
Kyi’s] leadership in the short term, I think it
will be difficult for the nldto respond co-hesively to this challenge it now faces,”
says Mr Kean.
Nay Phone Latt, an activist and political
prisoner under the last junta, suspects that
at least for the moment people would
prefer to express their dissent on social
media rather than in the streets, daunted as
they are by the twin risks of catching co-
vid-19 and provoking the army. “We saw
such brutal crackdowns in the past,” he
says. After the coup’s initial restrictions on
internet use were eased (they were too dis-
ruptive to business) criticism flooded so-
cial media, leading the regime to order in-
ternet providers to block Facebook, widely
used in Myanmar, for four days from Feb-
ruary 4th. In the longer term the Tatmadaw
has other weapons at its disposal, like dis-
information. Mr Wai Yan Phyoe Moe al-
leges that the army is already trying to sow
doubt about the true identities of protes-
ters in order to foment instability.
As these fights continue online, others
will be fought on the ground. General Min
Aung Hlaing’s talk of reinvigorating peace
talks needs to be read in the context of the
army’s belief that negotiation works best
from a position of strength. “[The coup] is a
precursor to a much more aggressive [mil-
itary] approach,” says Avinash Paliwal, of
the School of Oriental and African Studies
in London. He believes that the Kachin In-
dependence Army, one of the more power-
ful armed groups, has privately warned its
rank and file to “prepare for the worst”. It
may not escape the junta’s notice that more
intense fighting could offer a pretext for ex-
tending the state of emergency.
Attending to health and the economy
while refraining from violence in the Ba-
mar heartland may win the new regime the
support it needs for the next election to
produce a parliament more to the Tatma-
daw’s liking. To help things along it has al-
ready appointed loyalists to a new election
commission, and Ian Holliday of the Uni-
versity of Hong Kong suspects that it may
seek a way to ditch the first-past-the-post
system which has amplified the nld’s par-
liamentary majorities.
Their aim is not inconceivable. Most
Burmese adore Ms Suu Kyi. But their views
on democracy are ambivalent. Although
87% of those surveyed in 2019 by the Asian
Barometer Survey say that they support de-
mocracy, two-thirds believe it neither pro-
motes economic growth nor maintains or-
der. Nearly half support a role for the
Tatmadaw in politics—more than in 2015.
But having had a taste of democracy for
the past five years, many Burmese will be
loth to give it up. “We are afraid of being
beaten or killed or shot,” says Mr Wai Yan
Phyoe Moe. “But we have also seen that
many people have sacrificed their lives
fighting injustice during the military dicta-
torship in past decades. This time it is our
duty to end the injustice.” 7Bayof
Bengal
IrrawaddyBagoChinKachinKayahKayinMagwayMandalayMuse KunmingMonRakhine NaypyidawSagaingShanYangonKyaukphyuINDIABANGLADESHCHINATHAILANDMYANMARLAOSTa
nin
th
ar
yi2020 electionresult
LowerHouse,byparty
NLD(258)
USDP(26)
SNLD(13)
Others(18)
Townships where elections
were totally cancelled (15)China-Myanmar
EconomicCorridor
Gas pipeline
Oil pipelinePlannedrail/road
Economiczones200 kmSources:
MIMU; HKUST