Thought Experiment: Imagining the Political Changes in Myanmar Taking Place in China

It’s tempting as a China correspondent to look at the political changes sweeping Burma, and imagine their equivalent happening in China.

So, Nobel Peace Prize-winner, Liu Xiaobo, gets released from prison and is allowed to travel and speak freely in public. Other activists imprisoned for advocating greater democracy and more adherence to international human rights standards are also freed. Some media are still censored – but not all, and the restrictions keep changing, mostly ebbing away. There’s talk of starting a genuine dialogue with ethnic minorities that feel their civil and cultural rights have been trampled on, to find a way to be both more respectful and more inclusive.

Ok, so, applied to China, it all sounds a little delusional. But not so many years ago, China’s leaders looked almost benign – certainly, like pragmatic technocrats — when measured against the Burmese junta. Sure, they each had their massacre of pro-democracy activists – but the Burmese army is believed to have killed far more in 1988 than the Chinese army did in the Tiananmen crackdown 1989 – and it did it again in 2007, with lots of other repression in-between.

But over the past two or three years that the Burmese government has been easing up, allowing civil society to grow and claim new space, allowing news media more room to report and criticize freely, the Chinese government has been doing the opposite.

Faced with more than 500 million Chinese online, and most of those keeping up a lively exchange of views on Weibo, China’s version of Twitter, the impulse of China’s leaders has been to double down on its efforts to silence critics. Civil rights lawyers have been abducted from outside their homes and offices, taken away for days or weeks and tortured and threatened. Even those who post the occasional snarky comment online risk punishment – though, that hasn’t stopped snarky comments, satires and spoofs from going viral.

Of course, China is far more developed than Myanmar, and the privileged class – most of whom are either in the Communist Party or have close Party connections – have far more to lose if pressure and changing expectations from below change the power structure above. It’s different in Myanmar.

This Friday marks half a century since a military coup put General Ne Win in power, and Burma – once one of the most prosperous, promising and educated countries in the region – started turning back the clock. By the time of Burma’s pro-democracy uprising in 1988, the infrastructure and even the few cars on the streets hadn’t changed much since military rule started in 1962.

Today, the country long known as Burma and now as Myanmar is one of the least developed in the region. An impatient younger generation knows what it’s missing, and wants better.

A generational change has swept the military, too. And while many of the old generals are now in the nominally civilian government, their calculations about the best way forward seem to have changed. They’re tired of being the pariahs as international gatherings. They don’t have a lot to show for their half century of rule, beyond having enriched their inner circle and alienated much of the Burmese population and the world beyond. They’d like their country to be more integrated with and accepted by the world.

There’s already a start. Last year, some 800,000 tourists came to Burma – and the infrastructure is straining to keep up. Hotels and flights are booked out weeks in advance. US sanctions mean neither credit cards nor mobile phone roaming can be used, except in the few upscale hotels and restaurants that have figured out work-arounds, so visitors have to bring in small bricks of crisp, new dollars and Euros to pay their bills. (They’re serious about the crispness – hand over anything that feels like it’s been around awhile, and they’ll hand it back.)

Surely there’s a better way, Myanmar’s leaders seem to have decided. Reasonable people can – and do – disagree about whether 15 years of sanctions nudged them to this place, or whether they would have gotten there years ago on their own, through more interaction with the outside world. Instead, they’ve been largely relying on China as trading partner and ally. China benefited by extracting teak, jade, rubies and other resources at cut-rate prices, and while a few elite Burmese profited too, many ordinary Burmese have long expressed uneasiness about the relationship.

A turning point came last summer, when the Burmese government announced it was suspending construction of a controversial large dam that would have exported most of its energy to China and left most of the environmental damage in Myanmar’s ethnic Kachin area. The Chinese were shocked and indignant. Many Burmese were shocked too – but in a good way.

Since then, change has cascaded down on them – President Thein Sein meeting Aung San Suu Kyi in August, political prisoners being released, media censorship eased (but not yet abolished), ordinary people allowed to talk politics, human rights, and praise Aung San Suu Kyi, with much less fear of reprisal.

Many Burmese are quick to say this is far from enough. They want to live in a normal, free and thriving country. They’re willing to put in the work, and there’s optimism now that ranges from cautious to giddy, depending on the day, the person and the latest change made.

Many Chinese are proud of what China has already done, economically. But at the same time, ever more Chinese – especially the younger generation– want their country to catch up with the rest of the world, too, in terms of respecting basic civil and political rights. Even Premier Wen Jiabao has acknowledged more of this has to happen, and soon, if China is to avoid greater social discontent.

A little credit is due, then, to Myanmar’s leaders, for having the courage to risk change – or at least, the canniness to recognize that change is inevitable, and it’s in their best interests to ease into it and not to wait for an Arab Spring-style explosion. China’s leaders show no visible signs of being ready to take the same leap.