Imagined borderlands: Terrain, technology and trade in the making and managing of the China-Myanmar border

Abstract

Building on a ‘biographical’ approach to national boundaries, this paper traces the history of the China-Myanmar border—its formations, disappearances and rematerializations. In doing so, it identifies three alternative imaginaries that have characterized and shaped these borderlands throughout the past one and a half century. These imaginaries—terrain, technology and trade—sketch out some of the ways in which borderlands are seen, perceived and therefore acted upon by state authorities and powerful outsiders. They are central to how the boundary was demarcated, and to how it is managed today. These imaginaries, then, are reflected into specific practices—and thus have direct impact on everyday life along the China-Myanmar border. Drawing on both archival and long-term ethnographic research, this paper thus sheds light on the embedded processes of anticipation that underscore how the borderlands are envisioned today in dominant narratives centred around Belt and Road promises and fears.