Burma/Myanmar: What Everyone Needs to Know (10 page)

The United States recognized the independence of the Union of Burma very early. With the conquest of China by the communists, the outbreak of communist-inspired rebellions in Burma, Malaya, the Philippines, Vietnam, and Indonesia, and then the Korean War in 1950, there was palpable fear that the East Asia region was about to become communist-dominated. The essential U.S. policy in East Asia since the nineteenth century had been the prevention of control of that region by any hegemonic power; in the mid-twentieth century, the Sino-Soviet bloc was so perceived by the United States.

The United States dispatched a team to Southeast Asia to determine what was needed to prevent communism from spreading. The result was a U.S. foreign assistance program in Burma and other countries. There were a variety of specific projects and also technical assistance in economic planning. As a protest against the U.S. supply of arms to the Kuomintang, the Burmese government canceled the aid program but kept the economic advisors and paid them with Burmese government funds. After a hiatus of several years, the program was reinstituted.

The government of the AFPFL, a broad-based coalition, contained left-wing elements. In opposition to the AFPFL was an above-ground communist-oriented party, the National United Front (NUF). There were also two underground communist insurrections. Thus, the moderate socialist government
under U Nu had to walk a fine neutralist line in the Cold War. This vehement neutralism allowed both the Soviet Union and the Western states to vote for U Thant (then ambassador of Burma to the United Nations) to become secretary general of the United Nations (1961–1971). He became Burma’s most famous citizen.

Although U Nu had written an anticommunist play, “The People Win Through,” he had to balance delicately the United States, the Colombo Plan, the Soviet Union, Eastern European states, and China. State scholars and military officers were sent abroad, mainly to the United States and United Kingdom. Various governments, including the United States, had information centers and libraries, and the British Council, the Ford Foundation, The Asia Foundation, and the Fulbright Program as well as Johns Hopkins University all provided various types of aid and training. Burma received economic assistance from all of them in various forms, but consciously U Nu was most concerned with China and Burma’s long, indefensible border with it. As one author wrote, Burma was carefully neutral but always in China’s shadow.

Burmese relations with China were mutually cautious at the beginning but improved later. In an act of self-protection against an overwhelming neighbor, Burma was the first noncommunist country to recognize the People’s Republic. China, however, was skeptical at first. Revolutionary doctrine at that time stipulated that all noncommunist states controlled by capitalists or former colonial lackeys had nefarious plans or attitudes toward the new People’s Republic. Recognition by such countries was not automatic, as in normal diplomatic practice, but was treated with suspicion and had to be negotiated. Chairman Mao, who at that time was visiting Moscow, cabled to Beijing to reinforce that point when the Burmese relationship was being discussed. After several years, relations warmed, and there
were numerous high-level visits by Chinese leaders, including Chou En-lai, to cement the relationship called
paukpaw
(variously translated as cousins, brotherhood, or a relation based on kinship). Burma was the only country for which that term was used, and it indicated a special association but one that was not always smooth.

At the same time in the 1950s, the Burmese military, perhaps in contrast to the civilian government, recognized that the only potential external enemy of the state was China. Military planners advocated expanding the Burmese army with three infantry and one armored division. They recognized that such augmented strength could not halt a Chinese invasion but could only perform a holding operation against it until the United States, as in the Korean War, came to its assistance. U Nu believed the plan too expensive for so short a duration, and instead opted for closer Chinese ties as insurance. (Illustrating a vast change in attitude, in the 2000s the State Peace and Development Council [SPDC] wanted to train a paramilitary force as a holding operation against the Americans until the Chinese came to their aid.) A border agreement was eventually signed with the Chinese, each side making modest concessions, but early communist Chinese maps continued to demark northern Burma as Chinese territory, as had Chinese Nationalist maps before them. This has since ceased.

China provided various types of foreign economic assistance, usually popular and visible projects. Trade with China was limited, and overland trade was both illegal and spotty. Various insurgencies controlled many of the natural border crossings and a large area of the Shan State, called the Wa State, was inhabited by that ethnic group, some of whom (the “wild Wa”) had a reputation for dealing severely with outsiders (occasional headhunting for fertility rites). China began its support to the BCP only in the late 1960s, when the BCP, defeated in central Burma, began its own long march to the Wa area on the China border, where it established itself and recruited locally. Deng Xiao Ping famously said that state-to-state relations were
separate from party-to-party relations, so this dualism of close national ties and close insurrectionist ties existed for some time. China armed and trained members of the BCP and operated a clandestine radio station from Yunnan for the BCP.

It was only after the Cultural Revolution spilled over from China into Burma in 1967 with Chinese students demonstrating in the streets and espousing Mao’s revolutionary slogans that official relations became temporarily strained. Anti-Chinese riots occurred, although perhaps the Burmese authorities were relieved to see economic frustration vented onto Chinese merchants rather than against the government. Many were killed, but these deaths were officially unacknowledged. Ambassadors were withdrawn for a period. Since the coup of 1988 and the Tiananmen incident of 1989, however, Myanmar’s international relations are closest with China (see following discussion).

As already noted, there were two communist parties that followed various international revolutionary slogans. The Burmese government, however, was fervently anticommunist and tried to ensure its image of neutrality by taking economic assistance from all sides. A left-wing legal party, said to be the legal arm of the illegal BCP, did operate and expanded its influence in the civilian period. The communists were intent on regime change, and U Nu was expressly opposed to communism. The military during the Caretaker Government produced a volume by its psychological warfare arm called
Dharma in Danger
. Dharma, Buddhist doctrine and law, was portrayed as threatened by communism. Since that time, and even after the collapse of the BCP in 1989, the military has invoked the danger of communism to the state to justify some repressive measures.

Socialism, however, was the hallmark of most politicians who wanted to get the economy back under indigenous control.
The socialist party was founded in the late 1930s and became an integral part of the AFPFL. U Nu equated the egalitarian elements of Buddhism with socialism. Capitalistic greed, he said, was not a Buddhist virtue. During the civilian period, socialism was of a moderate variety; following the coup of 1962 it became a rigid doctrine encapsulated in the “Burmese Way to Socialism” (1962) an eclectic mixture of socialism, Buddhism, and humanism. It was further expounded in what became the philosophical basis for military rule,
The System of Correlation of Man and His Environment
(1963). These were taught as dogma to civil servants and in the universities.

When a retired Burmese military officer was asked whether the head of state, General Ne Win, was an ideological socialist or simply interested in power, he replied that Ne Win would be a socialist when Mao Zedong learned to play golf.

Burma’s early economic planning was strongly influenced by international socialist trends. Shortly after independence there were two communist parties in revolt, as well as a legal left-wing party. Democratic socialism was not only internationally fashionable at that time, it was generally viewed in Burma as necessary to get the economy back under Burmese control.

In essence, the government was financed through extraction of materials and their sale overseas. Tax collections and import duties were meager, and private remittances from abroad were absent. In addition to teak exports and some minerals, the government bought paddy (unhusked rice) from the peasants at a low price, milled and exported it, using the difference to finance the state. The insurgencies not only drained resources but also denied the government access to much of the mineral and natural wealth of the state, which was in unsafe areas.

The first economic plan was the Pyidawtha Plan (literally, cool, comfortable, or pleasant land) that was moderately socialist in concept. It was based, however, on a false
assumption: that the price of rice (Burma’s largest export at that time) would remain as high as it had been during the Korean War. This proved to be incorrect, and much of the plan could not be implemented.

The government was concerned about social welfare more than profit, and such endeavors were rarely cost-effective. A pharmaceutical factory was established to provide vitamins; book translations into simple Burmese were distributed through the Burma Translation Society. To save foreign exchange, a steel mill was built by Germany to operate on scrap iron, which was in abundance from war wrecks in central Burma, but it cost more to ship a ton of goods from Mandalay to Rangoon than from London to Rangoon, and the operation was never economical.

Although Burma tried to get more Burmans into business, and import and export licenses were limited to citizens, the firms often had a titular Burman president but in reality were owned and operated by Chinese behind the scenes. This was not unknown in other countries as well.

Efforts were made to increase agricultural production, but short-term credit was insufficient (and often politically manipulated), fertilizer was expensive and in short supply, and irrigation was mainly a means to prevent economic disaster from a failed monsoon. Because the state owned all land (and still does), peasants did not have the incentive to invest in infrastructure improvements for the property they farmed.

The pre-World War II standard of living of the Burmese was better than that of many developing countries. But the scorched-earth policies of both the British and the Japanese as they fought over the whole state, together with inappropriately conceived and inadequately administered economic policies, prevented reaching that level again until the early 1970s.

The 1947 constitution, adopted prior to independence, was an attempt to develop a parliamentary democracy in a multiethnic
state. It was written by fifteen Burmans, some of whom had British legal training, and was a product of compromise between the Burman majority and the minorities, but power rested effectively with the majority. It had a bicameral legislature composed of a Chamber of Deputies, representing the whole country and holding financial control, and a Chamber of Nationalities, providing a voice for the minorities. Each constituent state (Shan Kachin, Kayah, Karen somewhat later, and the Chin Special Division) had its own government but was dependent on the center for financial support. As one eminent Burmese consultant to the process noted, “Our constitution, though federal in theory, is, in practice, unitary.” It had all the usual provisions for the protection of cultural and other rights, although as with many constitutions, these were often ignored. It stipulated elections, which were held with credible results in noninsurgent areas. It avoided establishing a state religion, although it gave special place to Buddhism (the faith of some 89 percent of the population). It established a judiciary that was more independent than that of any government since then. It was a reasonable effort to translate Western parliamentary practice into a non-Western context, but it was quickly prepared. It was generally regarded at the time as forward-looking.

The AFPFL was a loose confederation of political parties and local influential leaders and strong men. Its membership ran the gamut of left to left-center political opinions that were socialist to some degree. More important, the AFPFL included a broad array of individuals reflecting the essential personalization of power; each leader had a power base and his own entourage, and sometimes armed supporters. These entourages were reflected in mass organizations that were affiliated with the AFPFL: a workers’ association, a peasants’ association, and a variety of specific groups, like veterans. The police were also organized along political lines, and various ministerial
positions were allocated to factions within the AFPFL. Spoils were allotted in accordance with personal loyalties. Ideational differences were less important than personal ones.

Because loyalties were highly personal, splits developed between leaders that on April 28, 1958, became formalized into two opposing camps; one was known as the Clean AFPFL and the other as the Stable AFPFL, each attempting to keep the cachet of the AFPFL name. The degree of tension was so high that the military feared civil war. This led to the constitutional coup of 1958 that the Caretaker Government instituted to avert this probability.