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Since its independence in 1948, Myanmar has been plagued by ethnic contradictions and conflicts.
The attack between the 42 ethnic groups has made the ethnic issue an important factor affecting the political stability and national security of Myanmar.
In particular, the turmoil in the four northern states of Myanmar in the past two years has sounded the clarion call for Myanmar to move towards separatism.
So, once the Myanmar group is destroyed, will it be divided into several countries?
Will the four northern states of Myanmar, which are close to China's borders and have deep ties with China, be incorporated into China's territory?
Ethnic unrest in Myanmar
Myanmar is a multi-ethnic country, according to the survey and classification of Myanmar after independence in the 40s of the 20th century, there are 42 ethnic groups within its territory.
Among them, the Burmese, who account for 65% of the total population, are the main ethnic group in Myanmar.
Since the founding of the Bagan Dynasty, the unified Burmese dynasty in 1044, the Burmese have dominated the political scene in Myanmar.
However, the Burmese have never been able to completely rule the land under their feet, which is determined by many factors.
The Burmese ethnic groups live in a central plain with fertile soil and flat terrain, and their agricultural production methods are more advanced, and they are quickly moving from an agrarian society to an industrial society.
However, most of the ethnic minorities live in remote mountainous areas and are extremely backward in agricultural production, such as the Miao and Kachin ethnic minorities, and even engage in primitive slash-and-burn agriculture.
According to statistics, after independence, 2.5 million people in Myanmar relied on slash-and-burn farming to meet their living needs, and slash-and-burn farming mainly relied on human resources, which stimulated the reproduction rate of the population of various ethnic groups.
The subsistence needs of the huge population have forced them to supplement their income by growing opium poppy, and many Myanmar have become addicted to drugs, leading to further poverty.
Poverty, in turn, forces ethnic groups to expand their opium poppy cultivation, creating a vicious circle that ultimately impoverishes ethnic minorities.
On the other hand, the Burmese are relatively wealthy.
The polarization of the economy has created de facto inequality within Myanmar and exacerbated the contradictions between the various ethnic groups.
After the Ne Win government came to power in the 60s of the 20th century, it tried to build a socialist economic model in Myanmar through a nationalization policy.
Within two years, more than 15,000 factories and shops were publicly owned, which allowed the state to successfully control the entire society's oil, transportation, financial and other industries, and the state-run economy achieved an absolute monopoly position.
At the same time, Myanmar's private and ethnic capital has also been suppressed, and the government has implemented a strict "self-containment" policy, prohibiting the introduction of foreign capital and refusing to accept external aid.
Naon
The policy of nationalization, self-defense and xenophobia has seriously hampered Myanmar's economic development and social progress.
From 1962 to 1973, Myanmar's GDP growth rate averaged only about 2.5%, and in the 80s, it began to experience negative economic growth, which made Myanmar the poorest country in the world.
Poverty combined with the government's ill-advised decisions has thrown the whole of Myanmar into chaos, fueling strong resentment and exacerbating ethnic tensions.
In addition to economic factors, conflicts between ethnic groups in terms of languages, customs, Xi, and religious beliefs are also a major cause of social turmoil and constant wars.
The frightening thing is that the Ne Win government, faced with the frequent disputes between the various ethnic groups, will only resort to tough repressive measures, trying to calm the conflict with power and military force.
However, due to ethnic and religious reasons, the rebels in various localities have received varying degrees of support from the local masses, and because they are located in remote mountainous areas, the government army's encirclement, suppression, and suppression have had little effect, which has further aroused the hatred of the rebels.
In this environment, Myanmar has naturally embarked on the path of armed secession of various ethnic groups.
By 1962, Burma had formed four large ethnic minority rebel groups.
In the 70s, Myanmar ushered in a period of ethnic contradictions, and almost all of the larger ethnic minorities established their own armed forces.
At its peak, the total number of these armed forces was about 45,000, and some of them wanted to overthrow the government by force, some wanted to achieve national independence, and some were only engaged in drug production and trade.
The issue of rebels has become the most troublesome problem for the Burmese government, and has even caused Myanmar to move towards a state of national division.
According to the current situation in the states of Myanmar, once the state apparatus is dissolved, the remaining seven states may all become independent states, leaving aside the seven states that the Myanmar government can still control.
At that time, Myanmar may be divided into eight countries.
Among them, the four states in northern Myanmar, which are the most turbulent and closest to China, will surely become the focus of global attention.
Four states in northern Myanmar
The four northern states of Myanmar refer to Shan, Kachin, Kokang, and Wa, of which Kachin and Shan directly border China.
The peculiarity of the four northern states of Myanmar lies in the fact that they have deep ties with China.
Take, for example, Kachin State.
The state is adjacent to the Tibetan region of the mainland in the north and Yunnan Province in the east, covering a total area of 89,000 square kilometers and accounting for 13% of the population of Myanmar.
Myitkyina, the capital city of Kachin State, is full of Chinese living and investing here.
The Kachin and the Jingpo ethnic group in China used to be the same ethnic group that lived across borders, and the two had a common language and similar Xi customs.
In the process of living together and integrating with each other, the Kachin people are inevitably influenced by Chinese culture.
Even because of intermarriage, many Kachin people already have Chinese blood in their bodies.
At the same time, the long and complex border lines between China and Myanmar and China and India in northern Myanmar, southern Tibet, and western Yunnan provide fertile soil for the long-term survival of the Kachin ethnic armed forces.
In the event of a defeat to government forces, Kachin forces can pour into China or India to avoid being encircled by Burmese government forces.
Historically, the Burmese government has reached a brief ceasefire with the Kachin Independence Army (KIA) on several occasions, and the two sides have held peace talks on many occasions in an attempt to resolve the contradictions between the two sides through peace talks.
The Kachin people have always chosen the location of peace talks close to the border area between China and Myanmar, so that they can retreat at any time if the negotiations break down.
Another example is Shan State, which occupies a quarter of Myanmar's total area and is the largest of Myanmar's 14 provinces, and is also inextricably linked to China.
With a total population of about 5 million, Shan State has an extremely complex ethnic composition and more than a dozen ethnic minority armed groups within the territory.
Unlike other provincial states, Shan State is a typical "international state".
It borders Yunnan, Laos and Thailand on the east side, and there are a large number of settlements in Shan State by the Dai people in China, the Tai people in Thailand, the Lao people in Laos, and the Assamese people in India.
Among them, China's relationship with Shan State is the most profound.
As early as the 1st century AD, the Dai people of China came to Shan State because of the war, and these Dai people once formed a union state in Shan State.
During the period of the Nanzhao Kingdom, the Dai people in Shan State were all under the rule of the Nanzhao.
In 937 A.D., the Later Jin Dynasty of the Central Plains Dynasty sent Duan Siping, the envoy of Tonghai Jiedu, to expedition to Nanzhao, and established the Dali State after the success, which included the present-day Yunnan-Guichuan and most of northern Myanmar, and the Shan State was also included in the rule of Dali.
It was not until the Ming and Qing dynasties that the Shan region gradually moved closer to Myanmar and was included in Myanmar under the intervention of British colonialists.
From the perspective of past history, if the four northern states of Myanmar, such as Kachin State and Shan State, become independent, China is the country most qualified to reintegrate them into the map.
So, can this vision really be realized?
Prospects for national peace in Myanmar
As far as the current situation in Myanmar is concerned, it is still too early to say whether it is the independence of the four northern states of Myanmar or the formation of a split situation in Myanmar.
After the Thein Sein government came to power in 2011, it was keenly aware of the danger of national separatism that might be triggered by ethnic conflicts in Myanmar, and proposed peace talks in a targeted manner.
Thein Sein's new government's ideas have brought a new picture of Myanmar's politics to life, providing an opportunity for fundamental reforms and decades of turmoil in the country's politics.
Thein Sein bluntly declared that he would work to achieve the following four goals: improve relations with the National League for Democracy, resolve ethnic conflicts, drag Myanmar out of the economic quagmire, and improve relations with the international community.
With the intervention of Thein Sein's government, the Kachin armed forces and the Northern Shan State Army successively declared a ceasefire to end the war, which brought hope for a peaceful settlement of the civil war in Myanmar, which lasted for more than 60 years.
Thein Sein
Since September 2011, representatives of the different regional governments and the Myanmar State have met with all major ethnic armed groups and reached temporary ceasefire agreements with most of them.
The international community believes that this inclusive, ethnically focused approach means that Myanmar is moving away from the chaos and turmoil of the past.
Thein Sein himself has repeatedly made public appeals for representatives of armed organizations in various localities to participate in the peace talks.
"The door of hope for Myanmar has been opened, and both the Kachin Independence Armed Forces and the Shan State Armed Forces can negotiate with the governments in their respective regions, and as long as you want peace, you can get it," he said in government media. ”
After the regional-level peace talks, the next step was for the international-level peace talks team to come forward.
At the end of 2011, the House of Nationalities and the House of the People established statutory peace committees to coordinate negotiations between the government and armed groups.
In just a few months, the Government, with the assistance of the Peace Commission, was able to negotiate peace with the Shan Eastern Armed Forces, the Wa Confederation Army, the Southern Shan State Army, the Karen National Army and other organizations.
These agreements are similar in that they contain four basic points: an end to the fighting or cessation of hostilities, the establishment of a liaison office with the government, the need to inform the government before military action is launched, and the continuation of future engagement in peace talks.
Of all the ethnic minority groups involved in the talks, only the Kachin Independence Organization (KIO) refused to sign a cease-fire agreement, which ethnic Kachin said must be based on political equality.
However, despite the Kachin people's complaints, this did not affect the government's plans for peace talks, and the Kachin did not rule out further talks.
Most crucially, the new peace talks set off by Thein Sein's government are all recorded in black and white and made public through the media, which invisibly restrains the excesses of the armed groups.
In order to win over all ethnic minorities and demonstrate his sincerity, Thein Sein also put forward a plan to restore the economy in response to the stagnation of Myanmar's economy.
Socio-economic development is the greatest dividend brought about by the peace talks, and for the war-torn minority areas, the temptation to rebuild the economy and develop production is too great.
So when Thein Sein proposed to benefit the people by building large-scale infrastructure and agricultural projects, the local armed forces could no longer carry guns anyway.
After his term expired in 2016, Thein Sein stepped down from Myanmar politics, but the tide of peace talks between various ethnic groups has not stopped.
Compared with the turbulence and wars of the last century, Myanmar today has undoubtedly made a big step forward in resolving ethnic contradictions and realizing national reunification.
Although there was another turmoil in northern Myanmar last year, as long as the current Burmese government insists on peace talks to resolve the issue, it is obvious that there will be no separatism, and there will be almost no chance that the four northern states of northern Myanmar will be included in China.
epilogue
Since the founding of the People's Republic of China, ethnic conflicts in Myanmar have lasted for more than half a century, and at one point have developed to a dangerous point where the country is divided and each state is in its own way.
Fortunately, however, since the beginning of the new century, the Burmese Government has adopted a series of programs aimed at promoting peace talks, which have greatly eased the contradictions between various ethnic groups.
For the time being, the situation in Myanmar is stable.
However, there is still a long way to go before the intricate contradictions of belief, culture, and religion that lie among the 42 ethnic groups can be completely resolved.
No one can say where Myanmar will go in the future.
Resources
- Yang Juwei,Zuo Ya.Ethnic conflict and ethnic reconciliation process in Myanmar[J].Southeast Asian Studies,2018(04):61-86+155.
- Tian Xingli.Analysis of the reasons for the intensification of ethnic contradictions in Myanmar during the Ne Win period[J].Journal of Southeast University(Philosophy and Social Science),2001(S1):59-62.)