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Residents in northern Myanmar are facing shortages of food and other supplies as China imposes restrictions on small-scale, informal trade, Radio Free Asia has learned.
The restrictions are centered on three border crossings, two of which have been recently shut down, in the northeastern town of Muse, which lies across the border from China’s Ruili,
Video posted on social media showed fresh fruit sellers in China giving their product away because they could not get it across the border before it spoils.
More than 2 million residents in northern Shan state rely on Chinese foodstuffs and goods. The closures have resulted in price hikes.
At the Muse border, the price of one liter (.26 gallons) of gasoline has risen to more than 10 thousand kyats ($4.76), while a bag of low-quality rice has almost doubled, a resident there told RFA.
“Every item has been expensive due to the closure of border gates. Business is not good,” he said. “People are facing various challenges in their daily lives.”
The restrictions have increased in the wake of junta leader Min Aung Hlaing’s recent visit to China, but it isn’t immediately clear if the two are linked.
During his visit, he met with Premier Li Qiang and discussed control of border trade between the two countries, according to junta reports.
Junta spokesperson Major Gen. Zaw Min Tun stated during a press conference following the military chief’s return from China that both sides discussed border stability and agreed not to allow opponents of the junta regime to operate on Chinese territory, and vice versa.
Vehicles stuck
The government announced closure of one of Muse’s three border gates last week, but now there are two gates closed.
The closures have blocked the crossing of more than 300 vehicles, including grocery trucks headed for Myanmar, and these vehicles are now stranded, a border trade merchant said.
Additionally, private vehicles hoping to cross the border with goods have become stranded, a Chinese driver told RFA.
“The traffic-police from the Chinese side have recorded the number plates of vehicles stranded at Mang Wein gate,” he said.
“We do not see any significant development until now. Frozen seafood has been unloaded from the cars into garages. About 60 percent of trucks are loaded with potatoes. While Chinese officials allowed the use of Mang Wein gate, the junta officials do not allow the use of this gate on their side”
RFA attempted to contact the junta’s spokesperson for the Ministry of Commerce but he was not available.
RFA emailed the Chinese Embassy in Myanmar on Thursday seeking comments on the further restrictions on small-scale informal cross-border trade. However, no response was recieved.
Translated by Aung Naing. Edited by Eugene Whong and Malcolm Foster.
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In the acclaimed new book Gaza Faces History, historian Enzo Traverso challenges Western attitudes toward Israel’s ongoing genocide in Gaza by reckoning with the larger historical context of the Holocaust and the Nakba. Traverso details how memorializing the Holocaust became a sort of “civil religion” that honored human rights and the values of Western liberal democracies after the Second World War. However, in recent decades, Traverso warns, “the memory of the Holocaust experienced a paradoxical metamorphosis, and it was weaponized by Israel and by most Western powers in order to become a policy of an unconditional support of Israeli occupation of the Palestinian territories.” Witnessing this distortion of history, “I was shocked by the way in which many words, many concepts had been abused and misunderstood,” says Traverso. “Now we are facing a paradoxical situation in which the perpetrator is Hamas and the Palestinians, and the victims are the Israelis. And this is a reversal of reality.”
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There’s an old Republican saying: “A government strong enough to give you everything you want is strong enough to take away everything you have.”
Donald Trump, now set to become the 47th U.S. president in January, may have won over small-government voters with a good deal of flummery, but his vision is in fact draconian.
And that vision is likely to apply to foreign relations, showing allies like Ukraine and Taiwan that a United States strong enough to give other countries what they want is strong enough to take away all they need.
In Southeast Asia, the Philippines could become another casualty of Trumpian uninterest and selfishness.
As one of the least trade-dependent states in Asia, the Philippines might not be as panicked as others by Trump’s proposal of a blanket 10-20% tariff on imports from all countries.
However, as a U.S. treaty ally that depends on American support in its increasingly tense confrontation with Beijing over the South China Sea, Manila is all too aware that it may now have to go it alone.
Until January rolls around, one has to work on speculation about what Trump might do.
The conventional wisdom is that he will be a far more effective executive this time around, with more knowledge of how to navigate the corridors of power and unshackled from the “adults in the room” who tempered his basest instincts during his first term.
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This should mean that he will get his way on economic promises, which reflect the fact that, as one veteran commentator put it this week, “Trump has no real economic agenda beyond clawing back jobs from Asia.”
Weakening economic growth
His proposed tariffs would certainly weaken economic growth in Southeast Asia, a region where the average trade-to-gross domestic product ratio is 90 percent, double the global average, according to the Hinrich Foundation.
Oxford Economics reckons “non-China Asia” could see exports fall by 3%.
On the other hand, there are people in the region who assume that because China would be Trump’s main target, the rest of Asia may benefit from Beijing’s troubles.
Even then, some countries, particularly Vietnam, have gotten away with allowing Chinese goods to be re-routed through its markets to be re-exported to the U.S. allowing Chinese exporters to bypass tariffs.
This is one reason for the massive trade surplus Vietnam has with the U.S. In 2019, Trump branded Vietnam the “worst abuser” of U.S. trade – at a time when its trade surplus with America stood at $55 million. It rose to $104 million last year.
The apparent benefit of hedging between the U.S. and China is that it allows neutral Southeast Asian states space to react to changing events elsewhere.
This is, presumably, one of those moments.
However, the logic behind hedging is that both the United States and China are equally vying for influence. What happens if one actively tries to retreat?
Perhaps the mistake was to think that the first Trump presidency, not the Biden presidency, was the aberration of American statecraft in the 21st century.
Groveling and flattery
Still, we cannot pretend that American foreign policy showed any great success under the Biden administration. It will be best remembered for failing to deter not only U.S. rivals – Russia, China and Iran – but also its friend in Israel.
In Southeast Asia, Washington’s no-policy-at-all stance on Myanmar has allowed the civil war to escalate and China to become the only foreign actor with any real influence.
It allowed relations with Malaysia to sour over Gaza and let Hanoi dictate the trajectory of U.S.-Vietnam relations.
The U.S. failed to even show up to regional events in the latter years of Biden, and the Indo-Pacific Economic Framework offered to compete with China was a dud.
Arguably, the biggest achievement was a more productive relationship with the Philippines and clarity over defense in the South China Sea – but that was only because Ferdinand Marcos Jr. won the Philippine presidency in 2022, reset relations and gifted Washington a diplomatic victory.
Yet no Southeast Asian leader will look forward to having to grovel before Trump, hoping to win his attention through flattery and backslapping.
Malaysia and Indonesia will now have to expect a response from Washington when they accuse it of collaborating with alleged genocide in the Middle East.
Vietnam can no longer expect there to be sensible people in the State Department who understand why it adopts “bamboo diplomacy” of balancing ties with the U.S., China and Russia.
Singapore, the trusted interlocutor between the East and the West, will have a much more difficult time explaining local sensitivities to Trump’s cabinet.
Failure to prepare
One shouldn’t underestimate the disruption that Trump might wreck on Southeast Asia. But that ought not excuse governments in the region for failing to prepare.
Asia might have been a little more resilient against a second Trump presidency if Japan and South Korea weren’t facing their own political crises; if Beijing ran its economy with more agility; if Thailand wasn’t in a constant state of political turmoil; or if ASEAN aspired to a little more than just reaching joint statements.
Indeed, things would be less dire if there was a little more of the selflessness and internationalism that others rightly condemn Trump for lacking.
Japan’s idea of an “Asian NATO” is sensible but won’t happen because of “dichotomies and divergence in country interests,” as the Philippines’ defense chief Gilberto Teodoro put it recently.
Why won’t Vietnam, for instance, call out Beijing when it threatens its neighbors’ interests?
Most epochs are defined by at least one existential anxiety.
In Southeast Asia, at least since the early 2010s, it has been defined by two: the rise of China’s power and the decline of America’s. Trump’s victory will accelerate the latter but, possibly, may also impede the former.
If there is a saving grace for countries imperiled by the threat of invasion or attack by Beijing, it is that Trump’s proposed 60% tariffs on all Chinese imports could so weaken China’s economy that war becomes less likely.
David Hutt is a research fellow at the Central European Institute of Asian Studies (CEIAS) and the Southeast Asia Columnist at the Diplomat. He writes the Watching Europe In Southeast Asia newsletter. The views expressed here are his own and do not reflect the position of RFA.
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