Beijing wins when democracy is extinguished

The Telegraph

 CON COUGHLIN
DEFENCE EDITOR

10 February 2021

Burma’s military coup plays into the hands of a Chinese regime intent on expanding its influence

First Hong Kong, now Burma. There is an alarming new tendency that, whenever an Asian country seeks to embrace the values of democratic rule, it invariably ends with pro-democracy activists being imprisoned and abused.

Burma’s experiment with democracy is a relatively new phenomenon, dating back only to the country’s 2008 constitution, under which the military junta agreed to permit a limited form of democratic rule. Now even these modest reforms, under which the veteran campaigner Aung San Suu Kyi held the quasi-presidential position of “state counsellor”, have been extinguished after the military, responding to her National League for Democracy’s (NLD) clear victory in last November’s elections, once again seized control of the country.

According to Senior General Min Aung Hlaing, the head of Burma’s Armed Forces, who led the coup, Miss Suu Kyi’s government was overthrown and martial law imposed over claims of electoral fraud. In a 20-minute speech on state-run television, he pledged that fresh elections would be held next year, and power handed over to the winning party, making Burma a “true and disciplined democracy”.

Presumably, this will only happen if the election is won by the opposition Union Solidarity and Development Party (USDP), which has close ties with the military and suffered a humiliating defeat in November’s ballot. To judge by the heavy-handed tactics used by Burma’s security forces against pro-democracy campaigners, with police firing rubber bullets and tear gas at protesters, and hundreds of NLD activists – including Miss Suu Kyi – placed in detention, the omens for a return to civilian government do not look good.

The overthrow of Burma’s Potemkin democracy, in which the military rulers never allowed the government to usurp their own authority, will be music to the ears of China’s communist rulers, who are presently undertaking their own brutal suppression of pro-democracy activists in Hong Kong.

For, after crushing freedom in Hong Kong, the last thing China’s communist rulers wanted to see was the emergence of a fully democratic state on their south-western border.

Having tolerated the generals’ insistence that she hold the constitutionally neutral position of “state counsellor” in the previous administration, Miss Suu Kyi had every right to claim to be the head of state after her landslide victory.

The prospect of Burma becoming a fully-fledged democracy might explain, just days before the coup took place, the surprise visit to the country by China’s foreign minister, Wang Yi, during which he heaped praise on the generals for their “deserved role in the course of national transformation and development”.

China has denied any involvement in the coup, claiming that it only wants the warring factions to “appropriately resolve their differences, and uphold political and social stability”. But with Beijing increasingly making its presence felt in the region, it will be keen to resolve the Burma crisis to its advantage. And, in this context, ironically enough, Beijing may find it has a useful ally in Ms Suu Kyi who, despite her status as the former darling of the West’s liberal Left, has forged close ties with Beijing.

Ms Suu Kyi’s standing in the West has suffered a dramatic decline since the halcyon days of 2011, when she was granted the singular honour of delivering the BBC’s Reith Lectures on the subject of liberty. Her fall from grace has been primarily due to her refusal to condemn the genocidal tendencies of the country’s military power brokers in their persecution of the minority Rohingya Muslims.

As a result, she has found herself ostracised by most Western governments, to the extent that, as Burma’s civilian leader, she turned her attention to Beijing, visiting China more than any other foreign country during her term in office, during which she cultivated close political ties with President Xi Jinping. This resulted in China increasing its investment in railroad and port projects in Burma as part of its “Belt and Road” initiative to expand its trade links to the Indian Ocean.

Burma, therefore, remains a prized target for China as it seeks to increase its influence in Asia, and the relationship that already exists between Mr Xi and Miss Suu Kyi might help to resolve the country’s present difficulties in Beijing’s favour. If sacrificing the chance of real democracy is the price, who would now think that Miss Suu Kyi would not pay it?

China’s determination, moreover, to maintain Burma within its sphere of influence will be intensified by recent Western initiatives to forge closer security ties in Asia. Last week, foreign and defence ministers from Britain and Japan held a joint video conference to strengthen security ties to act against China’s increasingly aggressive conduct, with Britain promising to send its new Queen Elizabeth aircraft carrier to the region later this year.

With tensions clearly set to rise between China and the West, Beijing will be even more determined that key states like Burma do not succumb to the appeal of Western-style democracy.