Teams of relief workers from Russia and China, the junta’s closest allies, were—not surprisingly—the first international rescuers to arrive in Myanmar after the earthquake. They were followed by teams from India, Thailand, Singapore and Japan. Supplies were flown in even from a poor country like Nepal. But so as not to upset the Chinese, emergency workers from Taiwan were told not to come. In its belated initial pledge, the US announced it would contribute a paltry US$2 million to assist in the recovery from the devastating earthquake, which, according to unofficial estimates, has claimed at least 10,000 lives. On Saturday, however, the US Embassy in Yangon announced that, “Following initial assessments from our disaster experts, the United States is making approximately $7 million in additional funds available to support earthquake-affected communities in Burma.
This additional support, on top of the $2 million announced on March 31, will provide earthquake-affected communities with emergency shelter, food, medical care, and water.”
Looking at the international response to the earthquake, two developments stand out, the first being the rivalry between China and Russia for influence in Myanmar, and the second being the unexpected decision by the US to donate anything at all, after dissolving the US Agency for International Development (USAID), a move that has seen it halt assistance to media and civil society organizations in Myanmar as well as to refugees in neighboring countries. Humanitarian assistance of any kind is normally not on the agenda of US strongman Donald Trump, who recently returned to the White House.
Beijing’s policy makers have not forgotten that the Myanmar military decided in the 1990s to reach out to Russia to counterbalance its then overwhelming dependence on China. Since then, Russia-Myanmar relations have flourished. Russia has become a major arms supplier, and Myanmar cadets have gone to Russia for training. In the most recent development, junta leader Min Aung Hlaing traveled to Moscow in the first week of March and signed an agreement with Russia on the development of a 110 MW nuclear reactor in Myanmar. That came after Myanmar and Russian officials met in Naypyitaw on Feb. 23 and agreed to cooperate on investment in the Dawei Special Economic Zone, including the construction of a new port, a coal-fired power plant, and an oil refinery.
China cannot be pleased with those developments. Myanmar is of utmost strategic importance to China, and the Chinese are determined to be the only game in town. As Hawaii-based researcher Miemie Winn Byrd pointed out in a 2020 study for the Asia-Pacific Center for Security Studies in Honolulu: “With over 2,000 kilometers of coastline along the Bay of Bengal and the Andaman Sea, proximity to the western entrance of the Malacca Strait, and a direct linkage to the Indian Ocean, Myanmar is a geographically significant country in Asia. That was the reason the British colonials and the Japanese during World War II strived to control Myanmar. The same geopolitical interests apply to modern-day China.”
Chinese displeasure with Russian activities in Myanmar came out in the open in August last year. A Chinese-language website called One Guide, which covers the fighting in northern Myanmar, revealed that the junta may turn to the infamous Russian Wagner Group of state-sponsored mercenaries for help in its wars against armed groups opposing its February 2021 seizure of power — and also accused Min Aung Hlaing of “betrayal” for ignoring Chinese efforts to mediate in the conflict. The website’s logo shows a picture of the back of a mysterious man wearing a Western-style hat, and it always displays unique videos of the fighting in the north accompanied by amazingly detailed maps showing the exact locations of battles and the positions of Myanmar army camps and outposts in the area. The announcer speaks rapidly in what Chinese-language experts consulted by The Irrawaddy say is standard Chinese, not a local or rustic dialect. And the subtitles in English are too good to have been produced by Google Translate or any such tool. One Guide’s outburst showed quite clearly that the Chinese do not want competition from any other outside power, not even Russia, which is usually perceived as an ally of Beijing.
China and Russia may have a common enemy today — the West — but they are not natural allies. The Chinese have not forgotten that what today is referred to as the Russian Far East consists of territories the Chinese once claimed as theirs. The Russian conquest of those areas began in the 17th century and was not completed until the mid-19th century. The Chinese suffered humiliating defeats and were forced to relinquish their claims to all the areas the Russians had taken over. To this day, however, Vladivostok, Khabarovsk and Blagoveshchensk continue to be called Haishenwei, Boli and Hailanpao on maps printed in China. The same maps use Kuye for the island of Sakhalin, Miaojie for Nikolayevsk-on-Amur, Nibuchu for Nerchinsk, Xing’an for the Stanovoy Range, and Shuangchengzi for Ussuriysk.
China and Russia became allies when both countries were ruled by communist regimes, but that friendship did not last for even a decade. When Nikita Khrushchev denounced the old dictator Josef Stalin in 1956, China’s Mao Zedong defended Stalin. The final break came in the late 1950s, and the conflict peaked during the Cultural Revolution in China, which lasted from 1966 until Mao’s death in 1976. During that decade of intense turmoil in China, with Red Guards attacking suspected “enemies of the people” all over the country, the revolutionary authorities in the town of Heihe in north-western China put up huge loudspeakers on the banks of the Amur River, which served as the border, and blasted anti-Soviet propaganda 24 hours a day, year after year, to Blagoveshchensk on the other side. The Chinese condemned the Soviet “revisionist renegade clique”, which they believed had betrayed true Marxism-Leninism. In 1969, there was even a brief border war between the Soviets and China over some disputed islands in the Ussuri River, a tributary of the Amur.
However, the loudspeakers fell silent a long time ago and the days of outright hostility are over. Today, a completely different message emanates from across the Amur. From Blagoveshchensk, people can now see a different Heihe: modern, high-rise buildings and, after dark, flashing neon lights. Cross-border trade is brisk, and the Russian Far East has become a backwater, a source of raw material for China’s industries and a market for cheap Chinese consumer goods. Russia, once a superpower, now hobbles along in the shadow of the much wealthier and more powerful China. The Chinese economy has grown from half the size of the Soviet Union’s before it disintegrated in 1991 to more than four times that of Russia today.
Russia has joined China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) in the hope of attracting Chinese investment to rebuild the heavy industries in the Far East, which for defense reasons were moved from European Russia during World War II and then went idle after the collapse of the Soviet Union and its economy. But China is not interested in spending money on such ventures. BRI in the Russian Far East means investment in infrastructure — ports, bridges, railroads, pipelines — to make it easier to transport raw materials and natural resources from Russia to China.
Russia’s leader Vladimir Putin, who is determined to “Make Russia Great Again”, has found a willing partner in Myanmar’s military regime. At the very least, he can show that Russia is a world power, and not just a mismanaged country that has suffered a dramatic economic and social collapse. And Russia can play a role in post-earthquake Myanmar in mending relations between Washington and Naypyitaw. Past US governments were vocal in their support for Myanmar’s democratic movements and opposed to the current and previous juntas, but the Trump administration appears to be paying less attention to such democracy-related issues and is more focused on countering the growth of Chinese power and influence across the world. But a sudden policy shift would provoke outrage among the Myanmar population at large, at home and in exile, and would also most likely be met with utmost skepticism — and suspicion — on the part of the Myanmar military. Nonetheless, the US pledge of aid to earthquake recovery efforts could open the door to more contacts.
It has been suggested by analysts that the Trump administration wants to use the Russians as interlocutors for re-establishing links to North Korea. Trump tried during his previous term in power, from 2017 to 2021, to get some kind of understanding going with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un. He failed, but in March Trump expressed his desire to reestablish that relationship, boasting that he “got along great” with Kim Jong Un and still has a “great” relationship with him. It is hardly any secret that the North Korean leaders get on well with their Russian counterparts while relations with China remain distant and even frosty. Myanmar could also be in the cards, the sources suggest. Trump is no doubt pleased to see how Russian investment in Myanmar serves as a counterweight to China’s influence — and if anyone could restore the United States’ collapsed relationship with Naypyitaw, it would be the Russians.
The policies of Trump’s regime are vastly different from those of any previous administration in Washington, and it could be argued that Putin’s Moscow and Trump’s Washington represent a more appropriate alliance than the present, uneasy pact between Russia and China. These are still early days, but the signs are clear. The Trump administration is reaching out, albeit cautiously, to the junta and most likely wants to get closer in order to counter China’s influence in Myanmar. In the race to be the most effective and best partner in earthquake relief efforts for Myanmar, the rivalry between Russia and China is on full display. And the US would certainly be sympathetic to the Russian efforts. As far as Trump is concerned, it is all about closing ranks against China.
