Myanmar

Darcie Draudt, Charles McClean, Will Piekos, and Sharone Tobias look at the top stories in Asia this week. 1. Explosions hit protestors in Bangkok. Two explosions hit anti-government protestors in Bangkok, Thailand on January 17, wounding more than two dozen people. Some reports claim the explosion was the result of an explosive device, such as a grenade. Since Monday, protestors have taken to the streets in opposition to the nation’s political system, which they demand be overhauled along with the resignation of Prime Minister Yingluck Shinawatra, whom they accuse of corruption. The protests, which have gathered around seven main intersection in Bangkok, started with 170,000 protestors on Monday and dropped to 60,000 people on Tuesday. By Friday, only 12,000 protesters were still on the streets. Though generally peaceful, the protest has been marred by small incidences of violence between the protesters and police during this week’s demonstration. 2. Buddhist mob allegedly kills Muslims in Burma. Buddhist mobs allegedly attacked members of the Rohingya Muslim minority in Rakhine state earlier this week, killing up to sixty people, after the disappearance of a policeman at a Rohingya village. Human rights groups report that security forces joined in the attack. Rakhine state officials denied that anyone was killed, but said that eighty-four Rohingya villagers were arrested. The United States has expressed “deep concern” about the reports and urged the government to investigate. At least 237 people have been killed and 140,000 displaced in the religious violence in the country since June 2012. Most of the victims have been Muslim Rohingya, who are denied citizenship and have less access to health care and education than Buddhists in the country. The Burmese government also uses the term “Bengali” to refer to the Rohingya, claiming that many are illegal immigrants from Bangladesh, though many have lived in Myanmar for centuries. The violence takes place as Burma begins its chairmanship of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations. As many as 230,000 Rohingya refugees have fled to Bangladesh, and thousands more live in refugee camps in Thailand. 3. U.S. Navy Realigns Carrier Fleet in Japan. On Tuesday, the U.S. Navy announced that the nuclear-powered aircraft carrier U.S.S. Ronald Reagan will replace the U.S.S. George Washington and become part of the U.S. 7th Fleet of forward-deployed naval forces stationed in Yokosuka, Japan. A specific timeline for the move has yet to be announced, but the Navy said in a press release that “The security environment in the Indo-Asia-Pacific requires that the U.S. Navy station the most capable ships forward. This posture allows the most rapid response times possible for maritime and joint forces, and brings our most capable ships with the greatest amount of striking power and operational capability to bear in the timeliest manner.” The Reagan is well known in Japan for assisting in Operation Tomodachi relief efforts after the March 11 triple disasters struck in 2011, but there are also local concerns about its use of nuclear power. The Washington became the first nuclear-powered aircraft carrier to be sent to Japan as part of the 7th Fleet when it replaced the U.S.S. Kitty Hawk in 2008. 4. Lunar New Year in China leads to holiday travel rush. China’s most important holiday, the Lunar New Year, has begun, and government officials estimate that Chinese people will travel by air, road, and railway 3.62 billion times over a forty-day period. The holiday officially only lasts a week, from January 31 to February 6 this year, but for many this is the only opportunity to return home for family gatherings. Travel delays are not the only concern however, as China is revealing a steadily increasing number of H7N9 bird flu cases. Health experts fear that the disease may be spreading, particularly as millions of Chinese will be traveling in the coming weeks. Fourteen new cases were announced this week alone. 5. Activists send balloons with information about the outside world into North Korea. Activists in South Korea, including some North Korean defectors, sent helium-filled balloons stuffed with propaganda materials into North Korea this week, including leaflets on human rights abuses, U.S. dollar bills, and small USB drives loaded with the Korean-language Wikipedia. North Korea has previously threatened to bomb South Korea in response to these actions and released an official statement saying that the launch is reminiscent of a “puppy knowing no fear of a tiger.” Seoul insists it has nothing to do with the launches, which have occurred often in the past. Thor Halvorssen, president of the U.S.-based Human Rights Foundation, participated in the balloon launch and wrote a detailed review of the experience. Bonus: Impressive business card in hand, Chinese billionaire offers to buy New York Times. This past week, news of Chinese recycling magnate Chen Guangbiao’s boastful business card has rivaled coverage of his offer to buy the New York Times, an offer which was rejected on Tuesday. Including such monikers as “Most Influential Person of China,” “Most Well-known and Beloved Chinese Role Model,” and “Most Charismatic Philanthropist of China,” the now-infamous business card is not the only thing working against Chen’s proposal to buy the American newspaper. He claimed to come to New York to purchase foreign media assets, and his capability to run the American newspaper is bolstered because he is “very good at working with Jews.” Business cards with the owner’s photographed visage or such bombastic titling is not uncommon in Chinese culture, but is also considered showy.

Just a short blog item to think about over your holiday season; Asia Unbound will be back in force in the new year. Over the past two years, as Buddhist-Muslim violence in Myanmar has spread from western Arakan/Rakhine State to other areas across the country, few leading Burman Buddhist politicians have been willing to criticize the Buddhist paramilitary groups responsible for starting most of the violence. President Thein Sein, to his credit, has on occasion condemned the violence, though his government has done little to address the root causes of the unrest. But Aung San Suu Kyi has, over the past two years, been even more reticent to comment on the unrest than Thein Sein or other top government officials. Until recently, Suu Kyi’s reluctance to condemn the attacks on Muslims—she even, in an interview in the fall, seemed to condone the ethnic cleansing attacks by vaguely referring in an interview to “global Muslim power”—did little to tarnish her reputation internationally as an icon of democracy and human rights.  She has continued to travel the world, receiving various awards from governments, foundations, and other institutions. But in the past two months, the world finally seems to have realized that Suu Kyi, now a politician and a declared candidate for president in 2015, is acting more and more like a politician—and abandoning much of the moral firmness that made her so respected and beloved. This recent long article in the Washington Post on Suu Kyi’s unwillingness to condemn the ethnic cleansing, a stance that is surely popular with her core Burman Buddhist community, is indicative of how opinion about her is changing.  The Post’s piece actually takes it easy on Suu Kyi, compared to some other recent articles in British, American, and other Western media outlets. Happy holidays to all our readers.

Since December 11, the Southeast Asian Games, a kind of Olympics for Southeast Asia, have been taking place in Myanmar. They go on until December 22, and there have been the kinds of minor hiccups one expects at any international sporting event—the Philippines is protesting a decision to strip one Filipina swimmer of her gold medal—but these are hardly different than the challenges that emerge regularly at the Olympics. Remember Roy Jones Jr. sitting on his chair in the boxing ring in Seoul in 1988, stunned at a clearly partisan judging decision  in the gold medal match that went against him? Other participants in the SEA Games have claimed that Myanmar, which as the host country has considerable sway over what events are included, decided to include an enormous number of obscure sports in order to boost its medal tallies and those of its closest allies, while excluding normal Olympic sports like gymnastics. Still, in many respects the Southeast Asian Games, which are really Myanmar’s reentry to the regional/international stage, appear to be a success for the home country. (So far—one never knows when something disastrous could happen in Myanmar.) The infrastructure built and refitted for the Games has held up well, a sharp contrast from events in other countries in the region, like the recent Commonwealth Games in India during which the facilities appeared to be falling apart and the athletes’ areas were so dirty they caused a minor scandal in India. Many athletes, officials, and other foreign visitors have praised the ease of travel in Yangon, hardly a given, and also have praised the availability of assistance in English and other regional languages at the Games. Overall, Myanmar has demonstrated that, in terms of hard infrastructure, visitor assistance, scheduling, and other components of events, it probably has the ability to host the many large Asean meetings that are coming its way next year, during its Asean chairmanship.  Whether Myanmar has the soft infrastructure to effectively run Asean meetings—enough quality diplomats and mediators, for example—remains an open question. But the SEA Games are a significant step forward in the country’s coming-out party.

Over the past two weeks, Myanmar authorities reportedly have arrested several men from Arakan/Rakhine State, claiming that they were planning to bomb mosques across the country. The reported plot, which comes on the heels of other bombings in October, highlights a serious problem.  Myanmar now faces growing insecurity and rising disappointment among citizens that reform has not brought higher standards of living. Interethnic and interreligious unrest now threaten to halt reforms altogether, depress much-needed investment, and even lead to broader regional tensions. In a new CFR Expert Brief, I analyze Myanmar’s fragile security situation, assess how the country’s insecurity threatens the region, and offer recommendations for policymakers in Myanmar and in leading donor nations. You can read the whole brief here.

This past week, reports from Myanmar police have emerged that a group of men were planning to launch bomb attacks at mosques across the country. The suspects, all Buddhist, all allegedly came from Rakhine/Arakan state, the site of the country’s worst Buddhist-Muslim violence over the past two years. Meanwhile, this week the Myanmar government publicly rejected calls by the United Nations’ Human Rights Committee to grant Myanmar citizenship to Rohingya Muslims. Instead, Naypyidaw declared that it does not admit the existence of the Rohingya as an ethnic group in the country. Naypyidaw spokespeople further declared, according to the Irrawaddy, that: The government would consider granting Burmese citizenship to ‘Bengalis’ who are eligible under the 1982 Citizenship Law—a piece of legislation that has been condemned by international human rights groups as discriminatory towards the [Rohingya] Muslim group. Indeed, the disastrous 1982 law is one of the pieces of legislation that basically legalized discrimination against the Rohingya in the first place, and set the stage for the last two years of pogroms by Buddhist Arakanese against Rohingya in western Myanmar. The past two years of violence already have left over 140,000 people—mostly Rohingya internally displaced, living in the jungle or in horrid IDP camps. The threat of new mosque bombings, the government announcement, and wild rumors in western Myanmar that Buddhist paramilitary groups are gearing up again to attack Muslims has led to fears that violence on the scale of 2012 is coming again to Rakhine/Arakan State and even other parts of the country with significant religious mixes. In the past few days, thousands of Rohingya have tried to flee western Myanmar on horrendously built boats, while reports suggest many more are heading into the hills again, leaving towns where they might be attacked. Myanmar’s slide into instability continues.

Last week, a string of bombings rocked Myanmar, killing at least one person and hitting targets ranging from the northeast to downtown Yangon. So far, the government has arrested eight men in conjunction with the bombings and alleged that the perpetrators are ethnic Karen who want to deter foreign investment and are unhappy that the main Karen organizations are negotiating for peace. But as political scientist Yola Verbruggen notes on New Mandala, the specifics of who planted the bombs obscures a broader point: the bombings only add to an overall feeling of insecurity among the public in Myanmar that has been building for more than a year. This feeling of insecurity among the public stems from several factors. In part, it is the result of rising inter-religious violence across the country, but it is also the result of disappointment that the transition to democracy, launched in 2010, has not thus far led to significant, broad-based development.  She writes: Many people, from taxi drivers to shop attendants, voice disappointment over the current democratization process. Nothing has changed, they say, they still struggle to provide for their families and opportunities are limited. Everybody who has taken a taxi in Yangon has probably had a graduate engineer, former school teacher or certified lawyer as their driver; they cannot get a job in their own field or get paid too badly to stick with it. Attention is focused on creating a ‘peace dividend’ in the ethnic areas, but because there is no fighting in the cities, similar policies do not seem to be implemented in central Myanmar. People do not understand why their livelihoods have not yet improved. They thought the magic of the word “democracy” would change their country,  but now they are becoming impatient. Like Verbruggen, I also have found many people expressing the sentiment (at least in Yangon) that the reform process that has been in place since 2010 should already have brought wider development. As I write in my book Democracy in Retreat, this expectation that democratization will quickly bring rapid growth, growth that lifts all boats, has been common in developing nations going back at least to the early 1990s. Throughout the massive wave of post-Cold War democratization, across Eastern Europe and parts of Africa and Latin America and Asia, both leaders of developing nations and many leaders of Western democracies aggressively touted the idea that political change would foster rapid and equitable growth. (Only a rare leader like Nelson Mandela had the courage to tell his people that democracy, while a good in itself, would not miraculously produce economic change.) Yet while democracy tends to produce a better quality of life over the long-term—one prominent study linked democracy with lower child mortality—in the immediate post-authoritarian period, democracy does not necessarily lead to higher growth. The chaos of a transition period actually can depress growth. It seems the lessons of the 1990s and early 2000s have not been learned in Myanmar, as local leaders, from the president’s office to the NLD, and foreign consultants and donors have been overselling Myanmar’s reforms. Myanmar’s political reforms have, since 2010, been extremely impressive. But constantly suggesting that the political reform process is going to produce a massive economic dividend, in a country that is still very challenging for investors, is only fostering this uneasy, angry mood.

Over the past week, a string of unexplained bombings across Myanmar has received considerable media attention, featured prominently in the New York Times, the Guardian, and many Western news wires. In part, this coverage came because one of the devices apparently exploded at the Traders Hotel, a high-end business hotel in the center of Yangon where many Westerners (including myself) often stay, since even during the years of military rule, the Traders always had reliable electricity and comforts. One American apparently was injured in the Traders bombing, and there were bomb blasts, which appeared to be from crude homemade bombs, at many other sites around Yangon. There also this week were several similar explosions in Mandalay. Today, more bombs exploded in northeastern Myanmar, killing at least one person, according to Global Post. Many Yangon residents almost immediately blamed the bombings on Myanmar radical Muslim groups, acting in response for two years of attacks by Buddhists on Muslims in western Myanmar and, increasingly, in Yangon and other cities in central Myanmar.  (No one has claimed responsibility for the bombings, as of yet.) It is possible that extremist Muslim groups are behind these bombings. One of the most vocal and notorious anti-Muslim Buddhist monks, Wirathu, escaped a bombing this summer that was likely intended for him. The Myanmar security forces have said that the bombings are the work of a terrorist group targeting tourist sites, although some of the places where bombs have exploded are hardly common places for visitors. But I’m not sure I buy this prevailing theory. Since 2012, few Myanmar Muslims have retaliated for what has already been nearly two years of violent attacks, which have displaced over 100,000 people and destroyed Muslim sections of many towns across Myanmar. Many Myanmar Muslims also still see outside actors, including the UN, Persian Gulf states, and the United States as possible saviors, even though evidence suggests none of these actors are likely to do much to stop Myanmar’s inter-religious violence. Still, this perception remains, making it less likely that Muslim groups would be attacking the Traders Hotel.  The attacks also seem designed simply to stir up trouble and cause panic, without even specifically targeting Buddhist nationalist groups.  In addition, these current attacks bear many similarities to small bombs that often went off across Myanmar before the end of military rule three years ago. Those bombings usually were the result of splits in the military, tensions between the army and ethnic militias, or attempts by the military to foster havoc to create a reason for its existence. My bet is that this new wave of bombs has more to do with the security forces than with Muslim extremist groups.

Last week, the Obama administration announced that, despite the rapid warming of ties between the United States and Myanmar, the former military dictatorship would not get any American military assistance in the fiscal year 2014. (Of course, as it stands now, there will be no U.S. budget in the fiscal year 2014!) As the Irrawaddy reports, the administration has taken this step because the Myanmar military allegedly still uses child soldiers, which makes it ineligible for U.S. military aid. There are many advocates within the Obama administration for moving faster on military-military ties with Myanmar, and indeed several other democracies, like former colonial power Britain, are moving faster than the United States on military-military ties. Yet the use of child soldiers is hardly the only reason why this decision to hold off on military aid is warranted. As an excellent recent Associated Press report notes, one of the major arguments for closer military- military ties does not hold up to scrutiny. Advocates of quickly boosting military-military ties argue that the interaction will help inculcate in the Myanmar military a culture of respect for rights and for the rule of law. This can be accomplished, so the theory goes, by sponsoring leading Myanmar officers to attend training through the U.S. International Military Education and Training (IMET) program. Yet the AP report notes: “The Government Accountability Office, Congress’ investigative arm, concluded in an October 2011 report that IMET training plans did not place a priority on human rights. Because of weak monitoring of the careers of IMET graduates, the report said, it was not possible to demonstrate the program’s effectiveness ‘in building professionalism and respect for human rights within foreign military forces.’” Given the weaknesses of IMET, and the fact that Myanmar’s inter-ethnic and inter-religious violence, some of which is linked to the security forces, shows no signs of abetting—in just the past two weeks there have been multiple attacks on Muslims in several parts of the country—the Obama administration has made the right decision on military-military ties, even if it is a decision that administration officials were forced to make by Congress and by Myanmar activist groups.

Will Piekos and Sharone Tobias look at the top five stories in Asia this week. 1. Obama cancels Asia trip. U.S. President Barack Obama canceled a four-country tour of Asia, including Indonesia, Brunei, Malaysia, and the Philippines, in which he would have attended meetings of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation in Indonesia and the Association of Southeast Asian Nations in Brunei. The travel was canceled because of the U.S. government shutdown. Analysts say that canceling the Asia trip, after Obama had previously committed to attending these summits every year, could deal a blow to the administration’s pivot to Asia. Secretary of State John Kerry will lead the U.S. delegation instead. 2. Hagel tries to reaffirm ties during trip to Asia. After only seven months as secretary of defense, Chuck Hagel traveled to Asia for the third time, hoping to prove that the administration’s rebalance towards Asia is a priority. Hagel first spent four days in South Korea, the longest visit by a U.S. defense minister in decades, where he discussed plans for a South Korean takeover of operational command of its own troops by 2015. On Wednesday, Hagel and Secretary of State John Kerry traveled to Japan to sign an agreement calling for construction of a new missile-defense radar system, deployment of drone aircraft, and joint efforts to combat cyber threats in Japan on Thursday. Leaders of the two countries also discussed possible responses to China sending Coast Guard ships to contest Japan’s control of the Senkaku/Diaoyu island chain in the South China Sea. While the United States does not officially take a position on the issue, Hagel repeated that the islands were covered by the security treaty that obligates the United States to defend Japan if it is attacked. 3. Shanghai Free Trade (and Free Speech?) Zone opens. China opened a new free trade zone in Shanghai on Sunday, which will allow banks and other businesses within the city to experiment with loosened regulations. An article in the South China Morning Post claimed that certain banned websites, such as Facebook and Twitter, will be accessible within the zone. Chinese state media summarily denied this claim [Chinese], but later admitted that certain foreign websites will be granted “special permissions.” Few details have been released about the specifics of the zone, but real estate values in Shanghai have already skyrocketed as a result of the announcement in July. Many analysts have drawn comparisons to Deng Xiaoping’s creation of the Shenzhen Special Economic Zone, which first brought capitalism to China thirty-three years ago. 4. Asian Development Bank cuts growth forecasts. Estimates of slowed growth in India and China and concerns over the possible reduction of U.S. stimulus measures led the ADB to cut its 2013 growth forecast for developing Asia. The bank has lowered its estimate to 6 percent, down from its April estimate of 6.6 percent. Predictions for growth in China and India dropped to 7.6 percent and 4.7 percent in 2013, respectively, from 7.7 percent and 6 percent. The ADB stated that the slowing growth in regional economies “highlights the need to push ahead with overdue reforms in areas like foreign direct investment, infrastructure development, fiscal consolidation and social protection programs.” 5. Riots return to Burma’s troubled Rakhine state. Burmese president Thein Sein travelled to the western state of Rakhine this week, following the death of an elderly Muslim woman and the burning of scores of homes in a fresh spate of sectarian violence. The incident in Thandwe reportedly started over an argument between a Buddhist and a Muslim over a parking space for a motorcycle. Clashes have been ongoing since June 2012; and more than 240 people have been killed and 140,000 have been forced from their homes, most of them Muslims. Bonus: “A Touch of Sin” opens in New York. Chinese director Jia Zhangke’s latest film, “A Touch of Sin,” will open in New York on Friday. The film follows four narratives, each of them dealing with a working-class character forced to the brink of violence by unjust circumstances. It won best screenplay at Cannes and has been shown this week at the New York Film Festival.

A short piece by Agence France-Presse (AFP) run in the Straits Times yesterday, buried amidst the big international stories on Syria and the stand-off in the Philippines and others, caught my attention. The short piece, titled “Poor and Homeless in Costly Yangon” discussed how, because of Myanmar’s political and economic opening, and the lack of quality office and apartment and factory space in Yangon, rents for any decent property have soared through the roof. AFP estimates that land prices in Yangon have risen since 2010, the beginning of Myanmar’s opening, to as much as $700 per square foot now, far more than the price per square foot in Bangkok, which is vastly richer and has twenty-four hour electricity water, and all other modern conveniences. Other articles have suggested that some properties in central Yangon are renting for more than $1000 per square foot, more than rentals in Manhattan. Conversations over the past three weeks with several executives from American and Japanese companies that have considered investing in Myanmar or are indeed investing confirmed for me the unreality of property prices in Yangon, an unreality I had seen myself too on recent visits. Some of these properties that are attracting London-type rental prices are not much more than bare metal and brick buildings that do not even have regular utilities; much of Yangon remains without electricity, water, or decent roads. But what is much more disturbing, and what the article raises, is that the skyrocketing rent is not only deterring investment and hitting the pockets of expatriate managers moving into Yangon; the rents are forcing thousands of families out of their simple places in Yangon, as landlords realize they can rent even the most basic apartments or buildings out to new investors for huge sums. How many people are being pushed out of their homes in Yangon—where GDP per capita is still only around $1,300—is impossible to estimate, although the government has become so concerned about the skyrocketing rents, and the impact on ordinary Burmese, that it is considering imposing new property taxes. Although many advisors to the president’s office are not in favor of this idea, at such an early stage of trying to attract investment, Myanmar already is running a serious risk of becoming like Cambodia in the 1990s, where massive investment and inflows of expatriates created such high inflation for rentals and, ultimately, even everyday essentials, that huge numbers of average Cambodians were driven out of the capital.

Will Piekos and Sharone Tobias look at the top stories in Asia this week. 1. Beijing goes to war against a former security tsar. Investigations of multiple senior executives at state-owned oil producer PetroChina seem to link back to a corruption case against domestic security tsar and former senior oil executive Zhou Yongkang. Zhou was in charge of the police and domestic security apparatus and was also a member of the Politburo’s standing committee until 2012. Zhou is not officially under investigation himself, though there are rumors that he is under house arrest. Officials under investigation include Li Chuncheng, deputy party secretary of Sichuan province, where Zhou was party chief for three years; Wu Yongwen, a secretary in charge of labor camps run by Zhou, and Jiang Jiemin, the minister responsible for overseeing Chinese state-owned assets and a protégé of Zhou. 2. U.S. considering restarting military ties with Myanmar. The Obama administration is considered restarting non-lethal military assistance for Myanmar for the first time in twenty-five years. Last week, U.S. Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel met with a former Burmese junta member in the first bilateral meeting between defense chiefs in twenty years. Military ties were cut in 1988 when the Burmese government gunned down protestors at a popular uprising. One possible reason for the proposed military aid is as an incentive for Myanmar to sever ties with North Korea. Some U.S. lawmakers are uncomfortable with giving military aid considering the government’s continued harsh treatment of minority groups such as Rohingya Muslims. 3. Chinese president Xi Jinping visits Central Asia to build economic, energy ties. Xi began his first tour of Central Asia since becoming president in March, traveling through Turkmenistan, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, and Kyrgyzstan. Energy policy has been the top concern on the tour, as China competes with Russia to import a significant amount of oil and natural gas from Central Asia. State-owned China National Petroleum Corporation signed a deal with Russian Gazprom to supply at least 38 billion cubic meters of Russian gas to China annually, and the next day Xi inaugurated a gas processing facility in Turkmenistan that China lent $8 billion to build. The tour will end on September 13 in Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan, with a meeting of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, a group that includes four Central Asian nations, China, and Russia. 4. South Korea bans fish imports from Japan’s Fukushima region. South Korea has instituted a total ban on fish from Fukushima and seven other Japanese prefectures due to new evidence that the waters may still be contaminated with nuclear waste after the 2011 nuclear facility meltdown. South Korea imported 5,000 tons of fish from the affected region last year. China has also maintained a ban on seafood, dairy, and vegetable imports since 2011. Earlier this week, the Japanese government announced the creation of a 50 billion yen emergency fund to build a barrier to prevent groundwater from leaking into nuclear reactor basements. The Japanese government emphasized that its seafood is safe and rigorously tested. 5. Millions prepare to vote in Australia’s general election. Australians are preparing to vote this week in an election that is expected to end six years of rule by the Labor Party. The Liberal-National coalition’s leader, Tony Abbott, is expected to oust Prime Minister Kevin Rudd. Labor strategists have focused on reminding voters on Rudd’s mostly successful record in the economic crisis during his first term as prime minister. Australia took over the rotating presidency of the UN Security Council this month in the middle of the debate over the Syrian civil war; Rudd accused Abbott as being too cautious in his approach to Syria, saying that the conflict is “baddies versus baddies.” Bonus: 400 million Chinese cannot speak Mandarin. More than 400 million Chinese nationals are not able to speak China’s national language, and millions more speak it poorly, according to Xinhua. There are hundreds of dialects of Chinese, including Cantonese and Hokkien, and many more languages in the country that are not in the same language family, such as Uighur, Tibetan, and Mongolian.

Since Myanmar’s reform process began in earnest in 2010, Myanmar civil society activists seem to have won one victory after the next. Indeed, the apparent change in the power of civil society, from before 2010 to today, has been probably the most striking aspect of Myanmar’s transition. Although the political system has opened up, there has not yet been a national general election since 2010; although the military is not as omnipresent as it was before 2010, it remains the central institution in the country, its role as a political actor untouched in many respects; although the business climate undoubtedly has improved, many Western and Japanese investors who have come to Myanmar in the past two years have returned home disappointed that, in reality, graft, poor infrastructure, uncertain regulations, and poor quality labor remain huge impediments to doing business. But civil society seems to have changed dramatically, in a way resembling Cambodia, which twenty years after the end of its civil war remains stuck with thuggish, pseudo-authoritarian politics yet has a wide range of powerful, vocal nonprofits and media outlets. Four years ago, leading protests of any type in Myanmar could easily get one a long jail sentence, or worse; the domestic media was mostly limited to state newspapers and broadcasters. Now, the media environment has been thrown totally open, with broadsheets, online sites, and the (transformed) old state media all competing for readers and viewership, with the kinds of open, investigative stories that would have been unthinkable a few years ago. Unions, aid organizations, groups designed to help former political prisoners, and many other NGOs have sprung up in Yangon in the last year or two, coming up so quickly that every time I go to the city it becomes harder and harder to find the offices of nonprofits I am looking to meet. Meanwhile, protests have erupted around the country over many different issues, including environmental issues. These protests seemed to have made a significant impact on the Myanmar government’s thinking. Most notably, massive protests over the proposed Myitsone Dam—partly because of concerns that the Chinese companies involved would be environmentally destructive—led the government to suspend the dam. This suspension was taken, by many Myanmar activists, as the most important sign to date that the country was changing—that the government was becoming increasingly responsible to the public, that politicians were developing a democratic mindset, one of having to cater to public opinion and get public support for actions they take. But maybe civil society in Myanmar, like politics, business, and the military, has not changed as much as it seems. This week The Irrawaddy reports that the suspended Myitsone dam is likely to be restarted. It reports that, despite the Myanmar government’s suspension—which many civil society activists believed was a prelude to killing the dam altogether—the Chinese investors in the project already have spent more than half the funds allocated for the dam construction, according to what Chinese managers of the project told an energy investment conference. This was the first actually transparent revelation of how much money has already been spent on the dam. The fact that so much of the funds have already been spent strongly suggests the dam construction will be re-started – if it has not already been, since there have been persistent reports of quiet construction activity at the site.

Amidst the din of Syrian intervention talk and Fed picks, the Obama administration is pushing forward quietly, but determinedly, to flesh out the pivot to Asia. While most of the critical attention on the pivot or rebalance is paid to what is transpiring on the security front, there is real, albeit slow, progress on the trade front and the potential for significant advances in other areas such as environmental protection. Washington is pushing hardest to advance the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), which if successful could be one of the signal achievements of the Obama administration’s second term. The high-end trade agreement involves negotiations among twelve countries over twenty-one widely disparate areas, such as government procurement and fishing subsidies. A meeting of the chief trade negotiators in Washington is scheduled for mid-September, and there is a continuous stream of thorny issues such as intellectual property on medicine and tariffs that must be waded through before a final agreement can be achieved. Washington is putting significant energy behind its efforts to get an agreement by the end of the year, but by most accounts this is overly ambitious. The administration’s efforts to promote regional security are also moving forward. Secretary of Defense Hagel recently traveled to Brunei for a meeting of the ASEAN defense ministers and along the way visited the Philippines, Malaysia, and Indonesia. In the Philippines, there were further discussions of a framework agreement that would promote closer cooperation between the Philippine and U.S. armed forces and allow for a rotational presence of U.S. troops, much in the same way as there is in Singapore and Australia. Finally, Congress held hearings over the summer to explore ways in which the United States could enhance the rebalance through stronger U.S. action in areas such as environmental protection. The United States is already engaged in a number of cooperative efforts with the Lower Mekong Delta region and a particular area of new focus in this environmental partnership could well be Burma/Myanmar, where biodiversity and timber resources are under severe threat and could benefit significantly from U.S. assistance. Critics of the U.S. rebalance nonetheless continue to abound. The TPP comes under fire for the opaque nature of the negotiations as well as its exclusion—not deliberate or permanent—of China. Washington’s efforts on the security front—which are often mistaken as the sole element of the rebalance—have been blamed for sparking “an Asian arms race” and accelerating the “militarization of states.” Some also criticize the unstated focus on China as misplaced. Amitai Etzioni argues, for example, that the Obama administration’s decision to plan for Air-Sea Battle is an over-reaction to China’s development of its anti-access/area denial capabilities; moreover, in Etzioni’s view, China has used legitimate channels to resolve more recent trade and territorial disputes, so why is the United States creating a problem where none exists? It remains far from clear that Vietnam, the Philippines, India, and Japan would agree with such an assessment. Whether or not the rebalance is in fact part of a U.S. “imperial pivot,” as some suggest, these critics miss the most salient point. There is no rebalance without the rest of Asia. If Australia, Singapore, Vietnam and others don’t buy into the brand of partnership or leadership that the United States is selling, the rebalance will die a very quick death. To assume otherwise ignores the vigorous debates ongoing in many of these countries, and ultimately demeans these countries’ ability to recognize and pursue their own political, security, and trade interests.

The visit on Wednesday by the United Nations’ special envoy to Myanmar, Vijay Nambiar, to Laiza, the headquarters of the Kachin Independence Organization, is a positive sign that the conflict in Kachin state might really be over. [Asia Times has a fine summary of Nambiar’s visit.] The peace deal between the KIO and the Myanmar government, signed in the spring, was obviously a major step forward to ending the decades-long conflict, but it did not provide real closure—it was not a final ceasefire. Among many Kachin leaders, there remained even after the peace deal signing a high degree of mistrust of both the central government and regional army commanders, who frequently, during past ceasefires, had gone over the government’s orders and launched their own attacks in Kachin state. The Kachin’s armed wing has not put down its weapons, and many Kachin desire a high degree of autonomy from the central government, a type of autonomy hard to imagine for many ethnic Burmans, including those in the National League for Democracy. The fact that Kachin state contains massive natural resources will make this autonomy debate even harder, when it is picked up at the next round of peace discussions in September. Still, both the Kachin news service and several prominent Kachin leaders say that, since the most recent peace deal, the level of violence in Kachin state has dropped dramatically, suggesting that the central government—with the assistance of China—has gotten a handle on regional commanders and increasingly can prevent them from making policy on the ground.  The fact that the central government allowed Nambiar to visit Laiza, even after the UN’s special rapporteur for human rights in Myanmar, Tomas Ojea Quintana, recently infuriated Naypyidaw by charging that during a visit to Myanmar he was left unprotected and attacked by a Buddhist mob, shows that President Thein Sein’s government is increasingly confident that the level of violence in Kachin state is dropping and is unlikely to spike again. Thein Sein’s approach to the UN also reflects the government’s growing confidence that its narrative of peaceful reconciliation and reform is playing extremely well in the international community, drowning out worries about Kachin state and even the inter-religious violence that continues on in Myanmar, leading to the gutting of another town by Buddhist mobs just last week. This sunny narrative has elements of truth in it, but there is still no clear future plan for a federal Myanmar, a federation that would offer the kind of autonomy that the Kachin and many other ethnic minorities desperately want. But Thein Sein is right: the government has gained the upper hand in international approval, as compared to the KIO and other ethnic rebels. Will this force the KIO to make even more concessions at the September round of peace negotiations?