Where China Meets India: Burma and the New Crossroads of Asia (review)

Thant Myint-U’s book is essentially a travelogue. Yet readers who also expect a solid political, economic and strategic analysis of Myanmar’s relationship with China and India will not be disappointed. Indeed the author’s intricate weaving of the personal, the historical and the political both inform and captivate the audience.

The book is divided into three parts: the first part is devoted to Burma/Myanmar’s turbulent modern history; the second focuses on Sino-Burmese relations both past and present; and the third examines the colonial histories and legacies of India and Myanmar. Most current affairs observers tend to characterize Myanmar-China-India dynamics only in terms of the interests of Yangon, Beijing and Delhi. But the book reveals a much more complicated relationship with a detailed analysis of how the rural provinces of China and India are important drivers in national policy planning. Indeed, as the pages turn, it becomes more obvious that the policies dictated by governments in faraway capitals are themselves governed by the need to develop their rural areas and promote cross-border trade.

The very first page of the Prologue posits that since imperial times China has searched for a back-door passage to India through the lands of present-day Myanmar. Chinese policy-makers today have successfully realized the imperial plans of their forebears and are building a direct route to the Indian Ocean via Yunnan and through Myanmar. Additionally, India’s north-eastern provinces have always looked to links with northern Burma for mutual prosperity. Both countries harbour an age-old dream of connecting trade and commerce through Myanmar. But history tells us that building these trade links have taken centuries and that they are not yet complete. Colonization and World War II put the otherwise unnoticed and remote areas of Myanmar on the radar of national governments, but they also left behind a succession of armed conflicts, mostly provoked by centuries of migration, racial tensions and geopolitics.

As Thant observes, present-day Myanmar’s borderlands are far from peaceful. Although ceasefires have been signed with various ethnic militias, a viable and long-term political solution is yet to be put on the table. Moreover, the northern Chin, Kachin and Shan states each have not one but many armed groups which spill over into neighbouring countries. The Chin National Front, the Kachin Independence Army, the Shan State Army-South, and the United Wa State Army have significant numbers of men under arms and still control territory where the Myanmar armed forces cannot set foot. These lands are far from the central authorities, and the government is unable to administer or promote development in such remote parts of the country. China faces a similar scenario. Its high national GDP and other economic development indicators apply mostly to the eastern coastal provinces. Unlike Myanmar, the century of internal conflict has passed for China. However, continued national progress can only be assured by equitable development. In part two of the book — “Southwestern Barbarians” — Thant explains in detail how inland provinces such as Sichuan, Guizhou, and particularly Yunnan which border Myanmar lag behind their counterparts on the eastern seaboard. According to Thant, Chinese policy-makers believe that connecting the inland provinces to the Andaman Sea through Myanmar will significantly improve trade and commerce, pushing them to higher levels of economic prosperity. In part three of the book — “The Edge of Hindustan” — the author describes a similar strategy employed by India to develop its north-eastern province of Assam by opening a direct line via north-western Myanmar to the Bay of Bengal. Assam, Thant notes, is also as far away from Delhi as Yunnan is from Beijing, only linked to the rest of the subcontinent by the “chicken neck”, a narrow area of land choked between Nepal, Bhutan and Bangladesh. To complicate matters, unlike Yunnan, it is still a region beset with conflict. Internal conflicts and China’s increasing...