Southeast Asia

In the past decade, Southeast Asian democracy has suffered enormous setbacks, with the exception of tiny Timor-Leste. Countries from the Philippines to Indonesia to Cambodia to Myanmar to Thailand to Malaysia have regressed from robust democracies or hybrid regimes—essentially semi-democracies—to outright authoritarian rule or to situations in which elections are still held but democratic institutions are deteriorating. Unfortunately, in the next year, the region’s prospects for democracy look likely to get even worse. For more on the increasingly grim situation for Southeast Asian democracy, see my new Japan Times column.

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Philippine Foreign Minister Teodoro Locsin Jr. was peeved at Beijing. It was early May, and hundreds of Chinese vessels had been regularly intruding into the Philippines’ exclusive economic zone in the South China Sea, where the Chinese government has made expansive maritime territorial claims. After lodging numerous complaints through formal diplomatic channels to no avail, Locsin took to Twitter and unleashed an expletive-filled tirade. “China, my friend, how politely can I put it?” he wrote. “Let me see… O…GET THE [F**K] OUT.” (Locsin didn’t bother with the asterisks.) It was not only Philippine officials and diplomats who were angry at Beijing’s willingness to raise tensions in disputed waters. In a poll conducted by the ISEAS-Yusof Ishak Institute in Singapore earlier this year, before the latest Chinese incursions into Philippine waters, roughly 87 percent of Filipino respondents said that they considered China’s encroachments into other countries’ exclusive economic zones and continental shelves to be the “top concern” in the South China Sea. The same proportion, 87 percent, said that if forced to align with either the United States or China, they would choose the U.S.—the highest share of any country in Southeast Asia. But even as Filipinos of all stripes vent their anger at Beijing, they should be equally furious with their own leader. His policy toward China has failed to either protect the Philippines’ national security or to boost its economy. Since taking office in 2016, President Rodrigo Duterte has courted Beijing, playing down its construction of military facilities on reclaimed islands in the South China Sea and the aggressive behavior of China’s maritime militia vessels. He has also ignored, for the most part, a 2016 international tribunal ruling that unequivocally rejected China’s stated claims to sovereignty over most of the South China Sea. At the same time, Duterte has consistently undermined his country’s alliance with the U.S. He has stalled on renewing the Visiting Forces Agreement, or VFA—which allows U.S. troops to maintain a presence in the Philippines—after initially trying to kill it. Duterte also vetoed the Enhanced Defense Cooperation Agreement, a deal that would make it easier to move U.S. troops and weapons into bases near the South China Sea. To be sure, the Philippines and the U.S. still enjoy strong strategic ties, and security officials who value the alliance provide a counterweight to some of Duterte’s impulses. It was likely the country’s military and national security establishment that pushed Duterte to buy a new supersonic cruise missile that would provide a deterrent capability against China, to backtrack from trying to jettison the VFA and to make other quiet efforts to restore warmer ties with the U.S. Yet Duterte remains intent on currying favor with Beijing. After Locsin’s outburst, Duterte declared in a briefing that “China remains our benefactor.” The following day, Locsin took to Twitter again, this time to apologize to his Chinese counterpart, Wang Yi, “for hurting his feelings.” But the reality is that Duterte’s mostly hands-off approach to the South China Sea has failed to change China’s behavior. In fact, when it comes to territorial issues, Beijing has treated the groveling Duterte the same way it has treated leaders of countries like Vietnam, which have taken a more hard-line approach toward disputed maritime claims. The incident that prompted Locsin’s Twitter tirade was just one of many occasions when China has sent hundreds of boats into the Philippines’ exclusive economic zone during Duterte’s presidency, intimidating Philippine naval vessels and making it easier for Chinese forces to seize contested islands and fortify them. Last year, as COVID-19 ravaged the Philippines, including its top military commanders, Beijing declared administrative control of the disputed Spratly Islands. It also continued building up military facilities on reclaimed islands in the South China Sea and sent ships to encircle and menace Thitu, the most strategically vital of the disputed archipelagos that the Philippines still controls. China has also increasingly used aggressive fleets to turf Philippine fishers off rich fishing grounds. Duterte seemingly hoped that, by shifting toward Beijing, aid and investment would flow into the Philippines, bringing jobs, growth and much-needed infrastructure projects. Yet his approach has brought few economic benefits during his single six-year term, which ends next year. In splashy announcements in 2016, Beijing pledged tens of billions of dollars in new investments in the Philippines. But construction has only begun on two proposed Chinese infrastructure projects—a bridge and an irrigation system—and they remain far from completion. China’s vaunted plans for energy, rail and other infrastructure projects have not even broken ground. As the analyst Richard Heydarian has noted, much of the investment that China has actually delivered on in the Philippines under Duterte has gone to online casinos and modest projects like small bridges. For the most part, these projects have utilized Chinese workers rather than local labor, even as the Philippines is suffering its worst economic downturn since 1947. The lack of follow-through on investments China promised to the Philippines in 2016 contrasts sharply with other Southeast Asian states. In Indonesia, China is financing a multibillion-dollar high-speed railway project connecting the capital, Jakarta, with Bandung city, as well as another high-speed rail line in Thailand. Both projects were contracted on relatively favorable financing terms. China’s development aid to the Philippines also remains small by comparison with other major donors. A recent report on aid inflows prepared by the Philippine government’s economic planning body showed that Japan remained by far the country’s biggest donor. During the first half of 2020, Japan provided nearly 40 percent of the Philippines’ official development assistance—about 17 times more than what China provided. Aid from the Asian Development Bank and South Korea also surpassed Beijing’s. More recently, China has stepped up to provide Manila with some COVID-19 vaccines, though the effectiveness of the Chinese shots remains somewhat uncertain. Duterte’s approval ratings remain very high, but the Philippine public has noticed how little he has gotten from his dealings with Beijing. A wide range of opinion polls show heightened levels of anti-China sentiment among Filipinos. Perhaps aware of that trend in public opinion, several candidates for next year’s presidential election, including the boxer-turned-politician Manny Pacquiao, have been talking tough on China. If elected, he could reorient the country’s foreign policy back in a direction skeptical of Beijing, closer to the United States, and in favor of building a multilateral coalition to defend freedom of navigation and territorial rights in the South China Sea. The front-runner for the 2022 presidential election, though, remains Duterte’s daughter, Sara, mayor of the southern city of Davao, though she has not confirmed her intention to run. Sara Duterte’s views on China are not as openly favorable as her father’s. But if she does run and succeed him in office, inheriting his political machine as the bulwark of her support, she would be hard-pressed to reverse her father’s China policy, no matter how disastrous it has been for the country. And no matter who wins the presidency next year, Beijing will have spent Duterte’s term in office strengthening its hold on disputed maritime features that are critical to Philippine national security, in addition to providing livelihoods to the country’s fishers. The damage from Duterte’s disastrous China policy has already been done.

Cheng-Chwee Kuik is associate professor and head of the Center for Asian Studies at the National University of Malaysia. Southeast Asia occupies a central place on the map of China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI). President Xi Jinping chose to announce the maritime prong of the BRI in Indonesia, the largest country in Southeast Asia, in October 2013, a month after he had launched the overland prong of the BRI in Kazakhstan. Southeast Asia is where the land “Belt” and sea “Road” of the massive initiative converge. Mainland Southeast Asia is one of the six economic corridors of the BRI, while maritime Southeast Asia is where the Indian and Pacific Oceans converge, sitting on the intersection of sea lanes vital for communication, trade, and transportation of energy and other critical resources. As indicated by the title of David Shambaugh’s 2020 book, Where Great Powers Meet, Southeast Asia is also significant strategically to both China and the United States. Thus, Southeast Asia is China’s “strategic throat” and is crucial to its ascendancy as a world power. To mitigate risks and maximize benefits in multiple domains, China has been financing and building a chain of ports, pipelines, highways, high-speed rails, land bridges, industrial parks, and digital connectivity centers across Southeast Asia and other parts of the world. While some of these endeavors predated the launch of the BRI, they have been accelerated since 2013. Together, these hard and soft infrastructure projects form a network of “dots” and “lines” on the BRI map, connecting interests, cultivating stakes, and consolidating interdependence between Beijing and other capitals along its peripheries. David Lampton and his colleagues thus observe: in this eventful century, all roads lead to Beijing, one way or another. The story of the BRI in Southeast Asia is about the power of proximity, as much as the proximity of power. Geography aside, there are other fundamental factors that show the importance of Southeast Asia to China’s BRI and its wider interests. These include: the imperatives of creating external demand for Chinese firms and remedying internal overcapacity in some Chinese industries in the wake of the 2008–2009 global financial crisis, neutralizing what China perceives to be U.S.-led “regional encirclement,” as exemplified by Obama’s “rebalancing to Asia” and the ongoing Free and Open Indo-Pacific (FOIP) strategy, as well as narrowing the domestic socio-developmental gaps between China’s western and eastern regions, securing sustainable resources and energy supplies, and managing internal transitions and tensions after the decades-long reform and opening up policies. Each of these imperatives is central to the Chinese Communist Party (CCP)’s regime legitimacy and political future. Each imperative highlights the increasing salience of Southeast Asia to China’s national interests and external strategies, even and especially when the CCP is struggling to cope with an increasingly challenging external environment. Indeed, as Sino-U.S. relations become more uncertain and China’s relations with the second-tier powers (other members of the Quad and other Indo-Pacific partners, including those in Europe) become more unstable, Southeast Asia will become more important to China. And as Beijing exhibits a growing inclination to use military coercion and political intimidation to safeguard what it sees to be its sovereign interests in the South China Sea and on other fronts, the BRI and other tools of cooperation and persuasion will become more important, not least to offset the adverse effects of China’s coercive actions and optimize its broader interests, while seeking prestige and power. These seemingly contradictory actions are likely to continue, as Beijing develops its dual circulation strategy, which maximizes synergies between domestic and international markets, in response to growing pressures from Washington’s China policy, including the decoupling pursuit. Under President Joe Biden, Washington is determined to rebuild U.S. global leadership by revitalizing its military alliances and partnerships in Asia and Europe, while collaborating with like-minded nations to push back against China on issues related to security, technology, infrastructure connectivity, development, supply chains, and human rights, among other matters. Big-power rivalries are being intensified across the twin chessboards of high- and low-politics (i.e., security and nonmilitary domains, respectively), increasing pressures and sparing scanty space for smaller states to maneuver and hedge for survival. For a further assessment of BRI in Southeast Asia, and its future trajectory, see the entire paper by Cheng-Chwee Kuik here.

Along with the increasing repression of the Myanmar junta, which has included putting Aung San Suu Kyi on trial for sedition and other supposed crimes, detaining foreign journalists including Americans, and increasingly stepping up fighting with ethnic armed organizations in states like Kayah, Chin, and Shan states, Myanmar is increasingly disintegrating into a massive humanitarian crisis and state collapse. In a recent essay in Foreign Affairs, the author Thant Myint-U captures some of this collapse, but it worth going into greater detail about the disaster unfolding in Myanmar. I wrote about the crisis last month, but it continues to get worse. Hunger and Medical Care: Myanmar’s collapsing economy, unrest, collapse of its public health system and the banking system, and growing internal migration, combined with the difficulty of getting aid into the country, are leading to a hunger crisis that could soon rank among the worst in the world. The World Food Program argues that some 6.2 million people in Myanmar will face a severe hunger crisis in the coming months, and that number increasingly seems understated, as the level of chaos spreads in Myanmar, with citizens frustrated with nonviolent protest increasingly using urban guerilla-type tactics to attack soldiers, and fleeing to ethnic minority areas to gain knowledge of armed operations. Food and fuel prices also are rising, adding to the looming catastrophe. Hospitals in Myanmar have been decimated, both because soldiers have commandeered hospitals, scaring off many people from visiting, and because medical staff walking off the job in solidarity with the civil disobedience movement. Basic medical care is no longer being provided in much of the country, vaccinations for COVID-19 and other diseases are not being given out, people are dying of preventable diseases, and with hospitals and public health facilities unlikely to open any time soon, there will be a long-running impact on public health that will last years. Employment: Virtually every sector in Myanmar, outside those in the illegal economy, is collapsing, and unemployment, always hard to measure, is surely skyrocketing. The agricultural sector, so important to livelihoods and full stomachs, is failing. With this being the current growing season, farmers cannot get loans, and many cannot plan, presaging disaster in the next year. Meanwhile, small businesses in Yangon, Mandalay and other cities are increasingly unable to operate, since it is hard to obtain cash to pay workers, violence and chaos is reigning in major cities, and the overall uncertainty is destroying the business climate. Many foreign companies have begun to retreat as well. A survey of foreign companies in Myanmar taken by ten foreign chambers of commerce and released in May found that a third of the firms had reduced their activities in the country by 75 percent, 13 percent of the companies had stopped all business in the country, and many others had made slightly less dramatic cuts to their business operations in the country. As the violence spirals in major cities, with more bomb attacks, shootings, and other types of unrest, foreign companies may retreat further. Household Income: The United Nations Development Program (UNDP) has reported that over 80 percent of Myanmar households have seen their household income drop in the past year. In a lengthy report, it has further predicted that about half of Myanmar’s population could tumble into poverty by 2022. And the country was not exactly operating from a high-income base before the coup. It was already one of the poorest states in East Asia, with high levels of poverty and inequality. As the UNDP noted, before the coup Myanmar citizens were living “on low levels of consumption that put them at risk of falling into poverty.” Many of these people, with no other options, will flee into neighboring states, where they will be highly vulnerable, and will further stabilize the Thai-Myanmar and Myanmar-China borders.

Dai Mochinaga is a senior researcher at the Keio Research Institute at SFC. China has expanded its influence over Southeast Asia's technological development through its Digital Silk Road (DSR) initiative, a newer part of the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI). This paper shows that China utilizes the DSR in Southeast Asia for several reasons. First, the DSR helps implement Beijing's cyberspace principles and norms in other countries. Second, it promotes Chinese investment in certain industries in Southeast Asia, and helps convince other countries to use technology standards common to Chinese firms. Finally, Beijing exerts its influence over Southeast Asia, via the DSR, to help promote its models for data privacy and security on the internet. Despite efforts via the DSR and other avenues to exert influence over Southeast Asian cyberspace, China has not been fully successful in its aims in the region, in part due to local resistance, and in part because Japan, the United States and other actors have responded to Beijing’s efforts with their own proposals for cyberspace, conceived as part of the Free and Open Indo-Pacific strategy. For the full paper about the Digital Silk Road and China’s influence in Southeast Asia, see here.

Benjamin Zawacki is a senior program specialist with the Asia Foundation’s office in Thailand, focused on regional security and cooperation, and the author of Thailand: Shifting Ground between the US and a Rising China. The Council on Foreign Relations acknowledges the Ford Foundation for its generous support of this project. China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) means many things to many people—including to the Chinese. Introduced by President Xi Jinping in 2013, just a year into his term, it was most precisely translated into English as “One Belt, One Road.” With the intended meaning lost in translation, however, it was reprised as the BRI and explained as an overland “belt” and a maritime “road.” Both would run from eastern China and converge, eventually and circuitously, in Venice, Italy. While the belt generally runs west by northwest, with its route on a map appearing as a long lower-case “z,” the maritime road is literally all over that map: It runs southwest down China’s coast and through the South China Sea, west by series of zigs and zags across the Indian Ocean, then north by northwest via the Red and Mediterranean Seas. And those are just the main streams of the project; the tributaries spread out, double back, and link up like circuitry. At any given time, the number of countries said to be participating in the BRI varies—but almost always grows—and with them does the number of projects that constitute, connect, and expand the initiative. The breadth of BRI is further complicated by Beijing’s having empowered Chinese provinces (such as southern Guangxi and Yunnan provinces bordering Vietnam, Laos, and/or Myanmar), as well as state-owned enterprises, to negotiate and designate BRI projects with other countries on their own. In rare cases, such as in Australia’s Victoria province, this empowerment is reciprocal. Yet, what constitutes the projects themselves has also been an ever-evolving matter, and with it—crucially—the very nature and purpose of the BRI. In other words, what is it? By most accounts, the Belt and Road Initiative was introduced to advance “connectivity” between China and its neighbors, and via its neighbors with places further afield, primarily through traditional infrastructure like roads and railways, seaports and airports, bridges and tunnels, and pipelines and canals. Underlying the concept was the promotion of economic growth, whereby investment in transportation would lead to increases in trade, tourism, and other income-generating activity for all involved. China’s own meteoric economic growth over previous decades, partly the result of having done domestically what it aimed to do abroad, added credibility to its idea that BRI would spark growth in other countries. Analysts were quick to point out, however, that a lot of infrastructure is “dual use;” that it might have military as well as commercial uses. China’s denial of such intentions, particularly vis-à-vis Sri Lanka’s Hambantota port and more recently Cambodia’s Ream Naval Base, have not quieted foreign states’ concerns about the potential dual use of BRI projects. To the contrary, they have led to increased challenges on geopolitical grounds, whereby China is seen as extending not only its patronage abroad but its presence in strategically sensitive areas as well. The case of Hambantota, of which China took possession in 2017 after Sri Lanka failed in its loan obligations, gave rise to accusations of the BRI’s “debt trap diplomacy.” While this idea that China’s BRI projects trap recipient countries in debt has been challenged by researchers at a wide range of institutions, it is still a dominant narrative in Washington and elsewhere. Moreover, at least as early as 2015, when it established the Lancang-Mekong Cooperation (LMC) forum, China has broadened BRI projects beyond physical infrastructure. The LMC’s earliest public statements expressly placed its very founding, meetings, agreements, and initiatives under the rubric of the BRI. This in turn has brought to the fore questions concerning Chinese influence, in addition to its more concrete economic, security, or geopolitical interests. Beijing doubled down on broadening BRI beyond physical infrastructure, introducing in 2016 a “Digital Silk Road” (DSR) in addition to the original BRI. This Digital Silk Road would promote fifth generation (5G) mobile internet capacity, particularly in countries behind or lacking in such critical twenty-first century technology, as well as other new technologies including smart cities, fintech systems, and others. At the same time, the inception of the DSR raised fears that it could enable the mining and utilization of data belonging or relating to foreign citizens, and that China would export its cybersecurity laws and other internet controls to foreign countries. Influence of perhaps a more welcome nature appeared in 2019, when in response to foreign criticism regarding environmental impacts, President Xi introduced the “Green BRI.” According to Beijing, BRI projects would henceforth account for environmental and ecological concerns, and in some cases be expressly designed to respond to them. Optimists welcomed this as imperative amidst growing alarm at climate change; pessimists judged it a rhetorical device that would not be followed by action. This past year, in the midst of a pandemic that originated in China, Beijing’s leadership further began promoting a new “Health Silk Road” to promote its “mask diplomacy” and make available its COVID-19 vaccine beyond its borders. The BRI in Thailand The BRI’s evolution, and the ambiguity of the overall project, are critical to understanding how BRI operates in Thailand. To a greater degree than in most other Southeast Asian countries, the BRI’s evolution and ambiguity are reflective of the project’s relationship with Thailand and with Thai civil society. This paper presents five main points concerning the ways in which Thai civil society has both challenged and been challenged by the BRI, resulting in a kind of split verdict as to the initiative’s present and future standing in the kingdom. First is that civil society in Thailand cannot interact with what it cannot identify. There is no single understanding of the BRI in Thailand and certainly no prevailing narrative concerning the BRI’s nature, purpose, and effects. This is symbolized by confusion as to when Thailand officially became a participating country and as to which projects count as part of BRI. Thais agree that the high-speed rail project, running from the Thai-Lao border to Bangkok and continuing south to its border with Malaysia, is a BRI project—in no small part because the rail actually starts in China and ends in Singapore. Yet on the one hand, the Thai section was agreed in concept and principle as far back as 2010, three years before the BRI was announced; on the other hand, Thailand did not appear on most BRI maps for several years after that 2013 announcement. And for a brief temporary period in 2016, Thai Prime Minister General Prayuth Chan-ocha actually canceled the project. Furthermore, the rail line is one of the few projects in the kingdom that Beijing and Bangkok agree is actually part of the BRI. A list from inside China in early 2019 contained seven BRI projects in Thailand, although most had not been notably publicized as part of the initiative, and several hardly publicized at all. Conversely, the high-profile Eastern Economic Corridor (EEC) and the rail network linking Bangkok’s two airports with U-Tapao Airport, were not listed. Nor was a potential canal across Thailand’s southern isthmus, despite press reports in Thailand going back to 2017 that it was being discussed as a possible BRI project. Of course, a project need not be considered part of the BRI for Thai civil society to promote or oppose it, or to seek more information or provide its points of view. But given the various conceptions of the BRI discussed above, as well as its close association with a larger but equally complex and contested “Brand China,” it stands to reason that the BRI label makes a difference in how Thai civil society views a project. Whether this ambiguity concerning projects’ BRI status is intentional or incidental is related to a second main point: Thai policymakers and business partners cannot help but be influenced by the approach of their Chinese counterparts, and China’s approach simply does not include an express role for civil society. While protests and petitions in China concerning infrastructure projects, particularly at a local level, are far more numerous than is generally reported, neither China’s various levels of government nor its state-backed banks and business are encouraged—much less required—to consult or consider views on the ground.[1] This is not to suggest that, while U.S. companies might expressly condition certain projects on social, human rights, or environmental impact assessments, Chinese liaisons would expressly prohibit them. Rather, the fact that China’s civil society does not generally see itself as a monitor or watchdog of the government, means that it is simply not factored into the equation on the Chinese side of the table. Civil society participation would need to be proactively introduced by the Thai side on any BRI project. This would invariably infuse the prospect of delays into a project’s timing and even doubts as to its viability, which generally disadvantages a negotiation. Add to this that Thailand has had either a military or military-backed government since 2014, just a year after the BRI’s introduction. The Thai governments’ own efforts to silence critical voices, centralize policy and power, and privilege big businesses and mega-projects in growing Thailand’s economy, have only signaled a stronger receptiveness to China’s state-driven approach. Indeed, in a recent book, Rivers of Iron: Railroads and Chinese Power in Southeast Asia, the authors note that the Thai government’s prioritization of the Eastern Economic Corridor over the high-speed rail, may be partly on account of the rail’s location in the stronghold of the military’s electoral, civil society, and grassroots opponents.[2] China’s high growth rates at home also are attractive to Thailand. After long periods of high growth in the 1970s, 1980s, and early 1990s, Thailand’s own yearly growth has ranged from just 1 percent to 4.2 percent since 2014.[3] Yet at times Thai policymakers, even under military governments, have pushed back against aspects of BRI projects. Regarding the high-speed rail at least, the Thai government has arguably achieved much of what might otherwise be expected of civil society. The State Railway of Thailand took the lead in summarily denying China’s request for development rights along the rail’s right-of-way and on the land on either side of its route. Controversy over whether Chinese engineers would be permitted to work in Thailand was also largely driven by officialdom, seriously delaying progress on the rail and resulting in Prime Minister Prayuth being excluded from China’s first Belt and Road Forum for International Cooperation in 2017. While a compromise on the engineers was reached, Thailand managed to secure considerable technology transfer from Beijing in the process. In January 2021, only the third of fourteen contracts concerning the rail’s initial section was signed, the result of extended and intensive negotiation by Thailand. Critically, the Thais have also assumed the lion’s share of financing for the project; in effect refusing to engage in “debt trap diplomacy” in favor of a more empowered—if initially expensive—approach. A third main point is similar: Alongside the influence of China’s negotiators vis-à-vis Thai officials, a more constant and persistent presence of other Chinese actors in Thailand has undeniably influenced Thai civil society. Spread throughout the kingdom, Thailand hosts the most Confucius Institutes of any country in Asia and more than in the rest of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) combined. They are designed to promote official versions of Chinese history, society, and politics. In 2019 in Bangkok’s prestigious Thammasat University, a new Pridi Phanamyong Learning Centre was opened, devoted exclusively to China and featuring an initial collection of over two thousand books. Alongside the thousands of Thais who study in these institutions were, in 2018, some 8,400 students from China—double the number from the previous year. Enabling the Chinese’ studies has been an explosion in recent years of Mandarin language courses throughout Thailand at all levels, as well as a rise in non-language courses taught in Mandarin itself. The rising number of Chinese students and classes in Thailand has been further enabled by three additional factors: For one, significantly more Thais have studied in Chinese universities than nationals from any other ASEAN country.[4] Two, a long and deep relationship exists between China’s leadership and Thailand’s popular Princess Sirindhorn, who studied in China, speaks and writes Mandarin fluently, and in 2019 was awarded China’s Friendship Medal, the highest honor given to foreigners. And three, there has been a proliferation of Chinese-language newspapers and media outlets across Thailand; previously such news outlets were limited primarily to Bangkok’s Chinatown. In addition, China’s state media outlets are producing copy in Thai for the kingdom’s audience. At least twelve of Thailand’s most popular news outlets are provided free articles from China’s Xinhua News, translated into Thai, while the Thai-language “China Xinhua News” Facebook page has millions of followers.[5] Chinese state media also provide the English-language China Daily to many sites in Thailand. Last year at a bookshop in Bangkok known as a gathering spot for civil society, a young, genial Chinese man introduced himself and kindly asked whether he might send something to this author’s address. The next day a copy of the China Daily arrived, whose stories and ads on the BRI absolutely dominated coverage. When this author politely asked for a reprieve several months later, he was assured that dozens of other coffee shops, college cafes, and NGO co-working spaces were receiving daily copies free of charge. Religion is another area of Chinese influence in the kingdom concerning the BRI. In late 2020, the Australian scholar Gregory Raymond published “Religion as a Tool of Influence: Buddhism and China’s Belt and Road Initiative in Mainland Southeast Asia.” In Raymond’s words, “It presents early evidence that the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) is evolving to incorporate people-to-people links as one of its five official goals.”[6] Indeed, in 2015, the visiting Communist Party secretary of Hainan province told Thailand’s foreign and cultural ministers that his province had just established a college to promote “Buddhist cooperation between China and Southeast Asia consistent with the framework of the One Belt One Road initiative.” Thailand’s Sangha Supreme Council sent a delegation to the opening two years later. Since then, Buddhist abbots and associations in Yunnan, Guangdong, and Hainan provinces have both sent and received delegations of their counterparts and fellow believers in Thailand, explicitly to discuss the BRI. Thailand’s Mahachula Buddhist University also sent monks to participate in a 2017 conference in Hong Kong, focused on “Theravada and Mahayana Buddhism along the ‘One Belt, One Road’.” Again, however, the extent and effects of this Chinese influence on Thai civil society are debatable. In late December 2020, the Bangkok Post reported that the State Railway of Thailand and a provincial governor had just presided over a public hearing on the rail’s second phase, to “provide information to the local community so they could comment and help the developers improve the project.” The story made reference to past and future hearings as well, concluding that “[s]ome 800 million baht (roughly $25 million) will be spent on a study and environmental impact assessment.”[7] Whether these consultations have preempted or addressed any local concerns is not clear. But aside from the role played by the State Railway Workers Union in the government’s rejection of China’s land-use requests, neither this author’s observations nor queries to Thai civil society contacts has revealed strong negative views on the high-speed rail. At the same time, Thai civil society has clearly resisted any implicit or explicit attempts at influence with respect to another project placed under the BRI umbrella: the blasting of a final inlet of rapids on the Mekong River to allow for larger vessels traveling to and from southern China. Already linking southern China to the “Maritime Silk Road” via its delta on the Gulf of Thailand, the Mekong River is also being connected to the Andaman Sea via an east-west railway across Thailand’s narrow peninsula. All of this “connectivity” has been subsumed under China’s 2015 Lancang-Mekong Cooperation forum, which in turn is officially part of the BRI. Three years after Thailand agreed to China’s 2016 request to blast the final rapids in northern Thailand, it reversed course in 2019 after sustained protest by civil society organizations and local community groups, and as the Mekong itself was experiencing its lowest levels ever recorded. Both Thai and foreign officials informed this author that the main reason for the cancelation concerned the river’s “thalweg,” defined as the middle of the primary navigable channel defining the boundary between two countries—in this case Thailand-Laos. The blasting, in other words, could cause Thailand to lose a sliver of territory to Laos. That said, publicly both the Thai and Chinese governments cited civil society’s concerns—the environment, ecology, culture, livelihoods, food security—as the main reason for the cancellation. Whatever the case, and public relations and face-saving concerns aside, Thai civil society clearly identified the blasting project as being driven by China; and activity, openly, and successfully opposed it. A fourth point is related to the involvement of Thais at the local level. Besides the ambiguities of the BRI itself, how we define and conceive of civil society in Thailand also affects our assessment of its impact on the BRI in the kingdom. Consider a potential canal across Thailand’s Isthmus of Kra, which has often—but not always—been discussed under the BRI since 2017, including by China’s ambassador to Thailand. The idea of a canal across the narrow isthmus has been raised and tested intermittently for literally three and a half centuries. A modern canal’s main proponent has been one Thai Canal Association, whose name has all the trappings of a civil society organization and whose membership overlaps considerably with the Thai-Chinese Economic and Cultural Association. At the same time, the Thai Canal Association’s chair is a former army chief and the secretary-general of a foundation named after a late prime minister and chair of the Thai king’s Privy Council, his group of close advisors. Other retired senior military and political figures, including another former prime minister, are also members. Their advocacy for a canal is focused on projections of economic growth and claims that it will bolster national security. Further muddying the waters, the association claims to have several hundred thousand signatures in support of a canal, from villagers and other Thais living in the relevant peninsular provinces but not formally organized as a civil society organization.[8] Or consider as civil society businesses, which are sometimes but not always thought of as civil society. Thai businesses range from small- and medium-sized enterprises to multinationals and are organized in an array of associations. Thailand’s Charoen Pokphand (CP) Group was founded by a Chinese immigrant to the kingdom in 1921, and eventually became the first foreign investor in Communist China. Today CP is a rich and powerful conglomerate present in every Chinese province. It is a giant in Thailand as well, employing several hundred thousand Thais, and is a key domestic player in the BRI’s Eastern Economic Corridor. In 2019, a CP-led consortium was awarded the concession to build a railway linking three Thai airports, another BRI project. CP had never ventured into transportation before, but a revolving door between the company and Thailand’s Foreign and Commerce ministries has existed for decades. In Thailand and elsewhere, civil society is commonly thought of as the domain of a younger demographic with progressive agendas; and frankly not of people with powerful alternative sources of leverage and legitimacy. Yet this denies civil society membership to older generations based simply on age or agenda, and denies people their right to trade one community for another (or to be part of multiple communities simultaneously). It also speaks to the fact that in Thailand, many of the new, vibrant, and progressive civil society organizations formed during the 1990s, were coopted, marginalized, and/or discredited by Thailand’s color-coded and reactionary interest groups during the 2000s. Finally, it is important to ask whether the distinction between civil society and civil society organizations, or CSOs, is a meaningful one. For instance, must southern Thai villagers even confer with one another on an issue, much less organize themselves around it, to count as Thai civil society? Indeed, the Kra canal may seem like only a sub-issue of the BRI in Thailand, but it exposes a much larger challenge confronting the country and its citizens. A fifth and final point is that, regarding the BRI’s programs beyond physical infrastructure, Thai civil society is plainly conflicted. China’s Digital Silk Road, according to CFR’s Joshua Kurlantzick, “goes toward improving recipients’ telecommunications networks, artificial intelligence capabilities, cloud computing, e-commerce and mobile payment systems, surveillance technology, smart cities, and other high-tech areas.”[9] Fifth generation (5G) mobile internet technology, able to carry enormous caches of data at almost instant speed, is a major aspect of the DSR. Not only is China’s Huawei Technologies already a global leader in 5G’s development and application, but in 2019 Thailand indicated that Huawei was leading the race for building out 5G across the kingdom. Some of Huawei’s investment runs through CP, which operates the leading telecommunications firm in Thailand and which was invited to participate in Huawei’s 5G test networks in the Eastern Economic Corridor. Thai civil society has not notably opposed the government’s favorable view of Huawei—and it is not difficult to see why. In 2018, 74 percent of Thai citizens had regular access to the internet, and Thailand led the world in time spent online each day with a jaw-dropping 9.4 hours. Nearly half of that time—4.6 hours daily—was spent on mobile internet, also a world-leading figure. Bangkok had (and likely still has) the largest number of active Facebook accounts among cities globally, and Instagram was not far behind.[10] Thailand also ranked number one in the world in 2019 in mobile banking penetration.[11] As for mobile devices, sales of Huawei brand phones have taken off in recent years, cutting into the traditionally popular iPhone and Samsung markets. Yet in mid-2020, as Beijing threatened the use of force against Taiwan and substantially tightened control over Hong Kong, a collection of Thai netizens criticized China’s moves on social media. This sparked a backlash from Chinese social media users, which in turn led to netizens in Taiwan and Hong Kong reciprocating their support from Thailand and the formation of a so-called “Milk Tea Alliance,” after the trendy drink popular in all three locations. Illustrated by a new #MilkTeaAlliance hashtag, this social media activity created a kind of de facto online community. Moreover, when Chinese users pointed out free speech violations in Thailand itself, Thais undermined the critics by readily agreeing with them about the suppression of speech in the kingdom. Indeed, Thai civil society has long opposed Thailand’s Computer Crimes Act, which the government has used to censor or chill free speech. While the law predates the DSR by nearly a decade, its 2017 amendments were passed less than a year after the DSR’s announcement. Thai civil society has accused these amendments of having been inspired and informed—if not enabled—by China’s “Great Firewall” and other domestic digital policies and practices. They allow Thai authorities nearly unfettered authority to censor speech, engage in surveillance, conduct warrantless searches of personal data, and curtail the utilization of encryption and anonymity online. Analogous to this dynamic has been the mixed reaction in Thailand to China’s new Health Silk Road: like all Thais, leaders of Thai civil society want access to a COVID-19 vaccine as soon as possible, and China’s Sinopharm and Sinovac have impressed with the speed at which they have produced one. Yet as early as April 2020, Sophie Boisseau de Rocher of the French Institute of International Relations noted “angry voices emanating from civil society” toward a Thai government that “failed to take strong action to fight the virus (in a bid not to offend China),” while Thai netizens were questioning the efficacy of China’s vaccine even before recent tests have cast further doubt.[12] In conclusion, just as China’s Belt and Road Initiative is many things to many countries, and to the many and diverse people within those countries; so is its relationship with Thai civil society a varied, nuanced, and evolving picture. As Thailand itself presents a unique situation to the BRI as a U.S. treaty ally, the world’s twenty-second largest economy (2019), an authoritarian democracy, and a superlative social media consumer; its civil society alternately ignores, accepts, welcomes, and opposes its numerous elements. This has been the case in Thailand for the past eight years, and can be expected to hold for the foreseeable future.  Endnotes ^ See, among others, Megan L. McCulloch, “Environmental Protest and Civil Society in China,” Naval Postgraduate School, Monterey, September 2015, http://calhoun.nps.edu/handle/10945/47303. ^ See David M. Lampton, Selina Ho, and Cheng Chwee Kuik, Rivers of Iron: Railroads and Chinese Power in Southeast Asia, (Oakland: University of California Press, 2020). ^ See the World Bank, http://data.worldbank.org/indicator/NY.GDP.MKTP.KD.ZG?locations=TH, accessed on February 1, 2021. ^ See David Shambaugh, Where Great Powers Meet: America & China in Southeast Asia, (New York: Oxford University Press, 2020), 158. ^ See Kerry K. Gershaneck, Political Warfare: Strategies for Combating China’s Plan to “Win Without Fighting,” (Quantico: Marine Corps University Press, 2020), 91. ^ Gregory V. Raymond, “Religion as a Tool of Influence: Buddhism and China’s Belt and Road Initiative in Mainland Southeast Asia,” Contemporary Southeast Asia, 42, 3 (2020), 347. ^ “Hearing Held on High-Speed Rail Project,” Bangkok Post, December 23, 2020. ^ See Benjamin Zawacki, “America’s Biggest Southeast Asian Ally is Drifting Toward China,” Foreign Policy, September 29, 2017, http://foreignpolicy.com/2017/09/29/its-on-trump-to-stop-bangkoks-drift-to-beijing/. ^ Joshua Kurlantzick, “China’s Digital Silk Road Initiative: A Boon for Developing Countries or a Danger to Freedom?,” Diplomat, December 17, 2020, http://thediplomat.com/2020/12/chinas-digital-silk-road-initiative-a-boon-for-developing-countries-or-a-danger-to-freedom/. ^ See “Thailand Tops Internet Usage Charts,” Bangkok Post, February 6, 2018, http://www.bangkokpost.com/business/1408158/thailand-tops-internet-usage-charts. ^ See Murray Hiebert Under Beijing’s Shadow: Southeast Asia’s China Challenge, (Washington, DC: Center for Strategic and International Studies, 2020), 305. ^ See Gershaneck, Political Warfare: Strategies for Combating China’s Plan to “Win Without Fighting,” 88.

Over the past half decade, China has poured billions in investment into Southeast Asia via Beijing’s flagship infrastructure project, the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI). In the latest episode of our podcast series, Selina Ho, assistant professor in international affairs at the National University of Singapore’s Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy, discusses with Joshua Kurlantzick, senior fellow for Southeast Asia at CFR, the effectiveness of BRI to date in Southeast Asia, the likelihood of its future success in the region, the ways in which Southeast Asian states themselves shape BRI, and the potential effects of the COVID-19 pandemic on China’s relations with Southeast Asia. You can access the podcast here.

The situation on the ground in Myanmar has continued to deteriorate since the military coup on February 1. Violent clashes have broken out through the country, and the Myanmar military and security forces have killed hundreds of people and jailed thousands. Despite the recent Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) Summit, Myanmar is spiraling into becoming something like a failed state, with potentially massive humanitarian ramifications for the people of the country itself and for neighboring states in the region as well. Even before the February 1 military coup, Myanmar suffered massive humanitarian challenges. Nearly a million Rohingya had fled violence in Rakhine State, mostly heading into crowded and unsanitary conditions in Bangladesh. Other Myanmar citizens had fled into Thailand and other countries, even before the coup, because of fighting between the military and ethnic armed organizations, as well as a poor economy, hunger, and the spread of COVID-19. But Myanmar’s humanitarian crisis now has reached a desperate state. The economy has collapsed, and the banking system is on life support; the state is ceasing to function due to the rising violence and civil servants walking off the job to support the anti-junta civil disobedience movement. Cash is increasingly difficult for many people in Myanmar to obtain, and many industries and companies are near collapse. For more on the scope of Myanmar’s widening humanitarian crisis, see my new Japan Times article.

This past weekend, the ten member-states of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), including Myanmar, held an emergency summit to address the ongoing crisis in Myanmar since the February 1 coup by the military. Since then, the death toll has risen above seven hundred, thousands of people have been arrested, and the country has disintegrated in civil conflict, with the armed forces regularly attacking civilians across Myanmar. The emergency summit produced five key points released by ASEAN. One, that the parties involved in Myanmar should immediately cease violence. Two, that the parties in Myanmar should seek a peaceful solution to the crisis via “constructive dialogue.” Three, that the ASEAN Chair will appoint a special envoy to mediate in the Myanmar crisis, and that envoy also will be assisted by the ASEAN Secretary-General. Fourth, that ASEAN will provide humanitarian assistance to the country. Finally, that the special envoy and a delegation shall travel to Myanmar to meet with all parties in the crisis. Although the results of the emergency summit are more interventionist than ASEAN usually is regarding member-states’ politics, the summit and its declaration still have huge flaws. As Frontier Myanmar noted, “the regional bloc ultimately reached a five-point consensus that Singaporean Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong said [junta leader] Min Aung Hlaing ‘considered helpful’, which sounds ominous.” It is true that an envoy, particularly one with significant clout, could potentially have some impact on the ground in Myanmar, and try to bring forth a cessation of violence, which certainly would be positive. But the five-point statement fails to address multiple issues. First, while a special envoy and a commitment to humanitarian assistance could pave the way for greater aid, it was already possible to provide humanitarian aid, as Myanmar specialist Kim Jolliffe has noted—the problem has been the challenges thrown up by the military and the chaos. Second, the statement does not call for the release of the many political prisoners who have been taken, which should be a precursor for steps toward resolution of the crisis, and it also, by invoking “all parties,” makes it sound like both the opposition and the military are responsible for the violence, when in reality the military is the aggressor and was the one that launched a coup. Frontier Myanmar has reported that the statement was supposed to include a call for releasing political prisoners, but that part of the document was scrapped before the statement was formalized. (And, the military reportedly continues to attack and arrest civilians, as recently as yesterday Myanmar time, so it hardly seems they are committed to stopping the violence.) Third, how does ASEAN intend to include the parallel government in talks in a way that treats both sides as equals, when the focus has primarily been on placating the junta—or to come up with some “compromise,” when the majority of the Myanmar public just wants the junta gone, and the junta violated a prior kind of civilian-military power-sharing deal? The parallel government demands a return to a democratically elected government. Finally, by allowing for what will inevitably be a fairly slow process of attempted mediation, with no clear timetable and no clear enforcement measures in place in the junta basically ignores or stalls the process, the summit statement gives more time for the situation in Myanmar to continue on. And, time often favors the aggressor, which in this case is the Myanmar military. Parts of this blog post were adapted from a series of tweets I did over the weekend on the ASEAN Summit.  

This weekend, the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) will hold an emergency summit in Jakarta, focused on the dire situation in Myanmar, where the country continues to spiral toward widespread civil conflict and humanitarian crisis, and the Myanmar junta shows no sign of relenting in its iron-fisted control of the country. As a recent piece by longtime Myanmar observer Bertil Lintner noted, there is little reason to believe the Myanmar army will crack from within. The summit, in theory, could allow ASEAN to play a regional mediating role, and to demonstrate that it has some ability to influence events in Myanmar, where the deteriorating situation is already turning into a regional crisis, with refugees flowing across borders, hunger rising in Myanmar, and the possibility of conflict spilling over borders. But initial signs regarding the ASEAN emergency summit do not suggest much hope for optimism that the summit will produce results that change the situation on the ground in Myanmar. The fact that junta leader Min Aung Hlaing plans to attend the summit suggests that he feels somewhat comfortable that the other ASEAN states are not going to take any harsh approach toward Myanmar; given ASEAN’s consensus style, other authoritarian states in the region area likely to block any tough approach. Meanwhile, Thai Prime Minister Prayuth Chan-ocha, the key actor who could potentially exert some leverage on the Myanmar junta—the two are personal friends and Myanmar is heavily dependent on economic ties with Thailand—is reportedly not attending the summit, a sign that, despite Prayuth’s mild expressions of concern about the situation in Myanmar, he is planning to sit back and do little while Myanmar continues to disintegrate. Without Prayuth and other Thai leaders playing a central role with the Myanmar junta, and even being willing to twist arms a bit, there are few other external actors with a line right to the top junta leaders, except perhaps China. Other major ASEAN leaders, like Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte, also seem like they are not going to attend the summit, further undermining the unity of ASEAN at the summit and making the summit ultimately less important and effective. As a result, the summit is not likely to have a major impact on the junta. ASEAN might convince the junta to allow some ASEAN observers into the country, an idea pushed by Malaysia. But beyond that, expectations cannot possibly be high for the ASEAN emergency summit.

In the days after Myanmar’s military staged a coup on Feb. 1, it likely hoped to consolidate power with minimal bloodshed. Having overthrown the elected government led by Aung San Suu Kyi, the Tatmadaw, as the armed forces are known in Myanmar, set out to create a managed democracy like neighboring Thailand’s, with an electoral system that guarantees victory for military-aligned parties and their allies. The coup leader, Gen. Min Aung Hlaing, probably hoped that neighboring states and possibly even the world’s leading democracies would eventually recognize Myanmar’s new government. Indeed, as protests erupted across the country in the coup’s immediate aftermath, security forces responded at first with crowd control efforts rather than the widespread use of lethal force. The junta even tried to gain the support of some of Myanmar’s ethnic armed groups, many of which had signed cease-fire agreements with Suu Kyi’s government. But over the past two months, the growing anger and resilience of the protesters have made clear that the demonstrations are not going to stop. In response, the Tatmadaw has stepped up its repression, killing at least 700 people, including dozens of children. Some 2,700 people have reportedly been arrested. While the anti-coup resistance movement remains largely peaceful, the military’s brutality has caused some demonstrators to shift tactics, trading in their slogans and placards for makeshift weapons like slingshots, air guns and even Molotov cocktails. As for the armed ethnic groups that the junta had hoped to woo, many of them have declared past cease-fires null and void because of the coup, and some are launching new offensives. There appears to be no clear endpoint or offramp to the violence, which is causing public services and other state functions to collapse in parts of the country. Much of Myanmar, particularly its ethnic minority-dominated borderlands, was already difficult to govern due to decades of civil strife. As I wrote in an article for the journal Current History in 2011, Myanmar had the potential to become a failed state even then. Ten years later, that prospect could easily become reality, even in major cities like Yangon and Mandalay. A civil war across the country also seems increasingly likely, one that could spark a massive humanitarian emergency and a new refugee crisis. If not contained, such a conflict could destabilize other parts of mainland Southeast Asia and even neighboring India and China. The Tatmadaw apparently failed to anticipate the resilience of the anti-coup protesters, the resistance of ethnic armies, or the fact that it would get little cover from other countries, save China and Russia. Yet for all its weaknesses, the Tatmadaw enjoys high levels of unity and institutional cohesion. Soldiers are indoctrinated from an early age through an intense propaganda effort, and internal incentives prevent large-scale defections. At this point, the junta is unlikely to yield to protesters’ demands that Suu Kyi’s government be reinstated; apparently, it would rather preside over a failed state than give way to a solution that allows for better governance but dilutes the military’s power. One Western diplomat told The Irrawaddy, an independent news outlet based in Thailand, that the situation resembles the civil war in Syria. Like that country’s dictator, Bashar al-Assad, Min Aung Hlaing and his fellow generals are “open to destroying the country to protect themselves,” the diplomat said. There are troubling signs of escalating conflict in Myanmar’s outer-lying provinces. Two of the most powerful armed groups, the Kachin Independence Army and the Karen National Union, have attacked military outposts in recent weeks. And the Arakan Army, a hard-line Buddhist militia that is active in western Rakhine state, condemned the coup in a statement last month, adding that “the oppressed ethnic people as a whole will continue to fight for their freedom from oppression.” By some estimates, the ethnic armies have a total of 75,000 soldiers under their command—fewer than the Tatmadaw’s roughly 350,000, but still a sizable number. The volatile situation could also spark renewed fighting between rival armed groups, causing even greater chaos in the countryside. For example, the biggest ethnic army, the 30,000-strong United Wa State Army—which controls territory in the northeast and is also allegedly one of the biggest drug trafficking organizations in the world—might use the power vacuum to try and consolidate or expand the territory it controls. As some protesters in cities and towns begin to adopt more violent tactics, there is also the prospect of urban armed resistance or even guerilla warfare. Some protesters have met with members of the ethnic militias to learn their tactics. This is likely to prompt an even more heavy-handed response from the military, which recently conducted airstrikes against the Karen National Union. And in some residential areas, security forces are carrying out nighttime raids, going door-to-door to round up suspected demonstrators and subjecting them to beatings, detentions or, in some cases, summary executions. With a steady supply of weaponry and materiel from Russia and its own factories, the Tatmadaw is in no danger of running out of supplies. For now, though, neither the military nor the protesters nor the ethnic militias seem capable of gaining a major advantage. Instead, Myanmar seems poised for an increasingly bloody stalemate, though with fighting stretching across the country. The junta has largely shut down the internet, but reports of urban battles are emerging. Frontier Myanmar, one of the last remaining independent news outlets in the country, recently reported that one police officer who had apparently joined the resistance used hand grenades to kill five other members of the security forces. In another incident, a protester detonated a landmine in an apparent effort to harm a group of soldiers, who then shot at protesters in retaliation. Frontier Myanmar reported that these were just some of the multiple violent encounters that are increasingly common between security forces and protesters across the country. A prolonged period of civil unrest in Myanmar will certainly affect its neighbors. With the economy devastated, the financial system collapsing and food prices rising, an untold number of people will fall into poverty and hunger; COVID-19 is likely spreading as well. As the violence persists, refugees are going to pour across Myanmar’s borders in larger numbers, causing significant challenges for receiving states like Thailand, Bangladesh, India and parts of China. Bangladesh, in particular, already hosts hundreds of thousands of ethnic Rohingya refugees who have fled persecution. Many of these countries have no desire to take people in from Myanmar, but they will likely have little choice. If not carefully managed, new camps for refugees and displaced people could breed anger and despair, providing new recruits to trafficking organizations and armed groups. So far, the international community has responded to the situation mainly by trying to pressure Myanmar’s military leaders through economic sanctions. But these measures have apparently not had an impact thus far. Instead, the lack of foreign investment means the junta will likely turn to illicit revenue-generating activities, like narcotics and human trafficking. It remains unlikely that nearby states will intervene directly to prop up one actor or another, turning Myanmar into a proxy war like the ones that were common in mainland Southeast Asia during the Cold War. Still, if instability rises in Myanmar, regional powers may feel the need to intervene more assertively. All of this means that the situation in Myanmar could easily get much worse before it gets better.

With the situation in Myanmar disintegrating into chaos, and Myanmar possibly becoming a potential failed state, some regional powers, including the United States and Australia, have taken significant actions against the junta government. Australia has suspended military cooperation with the Myanmar military, and the Joe Biden administration has implemented a broad range of targeted sanctions against the junta and many of its businesses. Taiwan, which has significant investments in the country, has passed a parliamentary motion condemning the situation in Myanmar and calling on the junta to restore democracy. (Japan, historically reticent to take a tough approach toward Naypyidaw, has taken a more passive approach, calling on the Myanmar junta to restore democracy and having its defense head join a call rejecting the coup but so far not taking stronger moves.) But Southeast Asian states, which have some of the greatest leverage over Naypyidaw—and certainly among the most to lose if Myanmar becomes totally unstable, with refugees flowing out of the country and conflicts possibly spanning borders—have done little about the crisis. Many regional states have remained silent on the coup and the atrocities, or have expressed mild concern. Indonesia has been an important exception, with President Joko Widodo condemning the violence and pushing for an emergency Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) summit, which seems in the works, but with no fixed date yet even as Myanmar unravels. Regional states claim they want to keep communication lines to Myanmar open, which is reasonable, but they have taken few other measures to address the crisis. As in many other crises, ASEAN remains torn, and with so many of its states now run by outright authoritarians or illiberal leaders who came to power in democratic elections, most of the region does not want to take a tough approach to the crisis. The Association of Southeast Asian Nations could suspend Myanmar, as some analysts like Elina Noor have suggested, because of the coup—the African Union has suspended countries like Mali after coups—but ASEAN is highly unlikely to take such a step, and is unwilling to abandon its principle of noninterference. If ASEAN does not suspend Myanmar, many leading democracies may decline to join meetings with ASEAN, like the East Asia Summit, where Myanmar junta representatives attend. The organization will seem powerless to affect events in its region, a further sign of ASEAN’s diminishment—even though, as others have noted, many countries outside Southeast Asia have looked to ASEAN to mediate in the crisis and help come up with solutions. There are virtually no signs the situation in Myanmar is going to improve any time soon. The junta recently refused to allow the UN special envoy for Myanmar to visit the country, the civilian death toll is spiraling, and a new criminal charge has been laid against Aung San Suu Kyi. The prospect of a national civil war, much broader than the existing conflicts in Myanmar, seems high. This is now almost surely ASEAN’s greatest crisis since the war in then-East Timor in the late 1990s and the financial crisis that rocked Southeast Asia at around the time. Since then, ASEAN has had triumphs, like building the ASEAN Economic Community. If individual ASEAN member-states, and the organization, continue to do virtually nothing as Myanmar becomes a failed state, what credibility will the organization have left?

In the initial days after the Myanmar armed forces launched a coup on February 1, deposing an elected government, the military may have hoped it would be able to pull off the putsch with minimal bloodshed. It would create a faux transition to democracy, and retain its power by eventually creating an election in which military parties and their allies would win—and then neighboring states and possibly even leading democracies would recognize that government. Indeed, in the first few days after the coup, as protest movements began to break out in the streets of many Myanmar cities and towns, the military responded with crowd control efforts, but did not immediately turn to widespread deadly force. The junta also tried to woo armed ethnic groups, many of whom had signed ceasefire agreements. But over the past two months, the resiliency and growing anger of the protest movement has made clear that the demonstrations are not going to stop. In response, the Myanmar military has stepped up its patterns of violence, shooting protestors and bystanders with live ammunition, arresting scores of people, killing children, and committing a wide range of other atrocities. In response, demonstrators, who had started by primarily yelling slogans, trying to pressure the military, and using civil disobedience to cripple the functioning of the state, have begun in some places to fight back, albeit mostly with makeshift weapons that are no match the for the military’s arms. Meanwhile, rather than aligning with the military, nearly all the armed ethnic organizations, some of which possess considerable numbers of men under arms, have united against the coup, and are beginning themselves to launch attacks against the armed forces. Two of the most powerful armed organizations, the Kachin Independence Army and the Karen National Union, have attacked military posts. The violence, and the continuing disintegration of state functioning, seems to have no clear endpoint, raising the possibility that all of Myanmar will become a failed state. For more on Myanmar’s potential disintegration into widespread civil strife, and a possible failed state, see my new World Politics Review article.

The past weekend was extremely bloody in Myanmar, where the Civil Disobedience Movement faces off against the military, and has so, for roughly two months now. On Armed Forces day last Saturday, military forces killed over one hundred people, including children, bringing the total death toll to over four hundred. Meanwhile, conflict seems to be ramping up in some ethnic minority areas, like the Kachin and Karen regions, where some of the ethnic armed organizations also have vowed to take on the junta—and this presages a potentially broader conflict in the country. The growing chaos also could spread the coronavirus, since there is massive movement of people, large street protests, and the country’s health infrastructure is mostly shut down. The violence occurred while junta leader Min Aung Hlaing hosted massive military parades in Naypyidaw, and a smattering of foreign dignitaries willing to meet with and essentially condone the regime—most notably, Russia, which sent a fairly high-ranking defense official to the Armed Forces Day gathering in Naypyidaw. Other countries including Bangladesh, China, India, Laos, Pakistan, and Thailand also sent representatives to the Armed Forces Day event in Naypyidaw, but these countries sent low-level people and have not recognized the junta government. The Russian representative met with Min Aung Hlaing and professed Russia’s close relations with Naypyidaw. As the Myanmar conflict has gained global attention from news outlets and policymakers, some policymakers have wondered why the demonstrations, and the failure of the armed forces to quickly consolidate the coup, have not led to splits in the Myanmar military. Such splits—think of the splits in the Philippine military in the 1980s that helped usher dictator Ferdinand Marcos out the door, or even splits that happened regularly in the past within the Thai military, sometimes leading coups to fail—are often the way that coup attempts falter and authoritarian regimes crumble. The New York Times and the Washington Post recently had two excellent articles showing, in part, why such a split in the is unlikely within the Myanmar military—a point understood by many Myanmar experts, but now being revealed to the world. Both the pieces show how the Myanmar military operates as a state within a state, with its own network of schools, housing, medical care and other types of social welfare, and other institutions. In addition, they show how the military inculcates officers and enlisted men with an intense amount of propaganda and almost brain-washing, while cutting them off from the rest of the country and from many sources of information. The New York Times article notes: From the moment they enter boot camp, Tatmadaw troops are taught that they are guardians of a country—and a religion—that will crumble without them … They occupy a privileged state within a state, in which soldiers live, work and socialize apart from the rest of society, imbibing an ideology that puts them far above the civilian population. The officers described being constantly monitored by their superiors, in barracks and on Facebook. A steady diet of propaganda feeds them notions of enemies at every corner, even on city streets. This approach serves to convince even rank-and-file soldiers, who still live in spartan conditions, that the military is the central institution in the country and of Buddhism in Myanmar, and one worth defending at any cost, even if that means murdering Myanmar civilians. This indoctrination—and the parallel social welfare net—also may cushion the sting of the fact that Myanmar soldiers are often treated poorly by superiors, live in the field in rudimentary conditions, and currently are often going unpaid. And at higher levels, top officers and top commanders are able to live lavishly, because the military has plundered the country to create a web of businesses in nearly every industry in Myanmar. To give in to the protestors, these top officers and commanders would risk not only punishment for their brutality but also probably would have to give up assets and these parallel business relationships. This combination of paranoid indoctrination and a web of business interests at the top of the Myanmar military suggests that it may be nearly impossible for a major split in the armed forces to occur.