China and Myanmar: Alternating between 'Brothers' and 'Cousins'

Abstract

Three decades of economic reform have led to a comprehensive recasting of China's geostrategic priorities in its immediate periphery. China's relations with Myanmar are an instance of a bilateral relationship that has gone from strength to strength in the past two decades following internal political upheavals in the late 1980s that motivated the two countries to reach out to each other following international opprobrium. This article will explain the strategic nature of relations between Myanmar and China in the last decade and attempt to posit this equation in a South Asian context. The structure of the article includes includes four sections-the first section is a brief introduction that captures five decades of relations between Myanmar and China from 1950 to 2000; the second section examines the comprehensive nature of their bilateral relations; the third section analyses mutual perceptions; and the concluding section focuses on the impact China-Myanmar relations has on the South Asian region. There are two central arguments in this research article-the first revolves around the hypothesis that Myanmar-China relations are motivated by geo-strategic and geo-economic considerations. The second argument rests on the premise that there is no 'client dependency' in this bilateral relationship and China-Myanmar relations while 'close' and 'friendly' do have their share of concerns.