The undeniable drawing of the border does not end the centuries-old influence of the neighboring regions. Burmese allocation for a strong geographical region would likely have resolved a confrontation with China, but has failed to end insecurity. For reasons, the same applies to China’s borders near India.
Mixed results: The agreement on the China-Burma border remained largely, but the civil war continued.
The current clash in the Himalayas between the world’s two most populous countries has rekindled the debate that a timely settlement of the Chinese-Indian border dispute in the 1950s would have prevented intermittent episodes of border clashes by the two Asian giants in the coming decades. There is sufficient literature and interpretations circulating on the Border Talks between China and India in the 1950s between Chinese Prime Minister Zhou Enlai and Indian Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru.
In the 1950s and 1960s, China continued talks with at least 12 of its neighbors. China has stated that it does not seek expansion because it rhetorically claimed that it had reshaped its land borders into “friendship borders.” In this context, it would possibly be useful to examine whether undeniable border demarcation can bring peace to border regions. The China-Burma border would possibly be a relatively closer benchmark to the effective control line between China and India. China has a 1,358-mile border with Myanmar. Like India, Myanmar’s benchmark on the border factor was imperial claims, conventions, agreements, and archives. China refused to comply with imperial conventions or claims on the grounds that they were unilateral interpretations of the border.
The cases in which the Chinese-Burmese border agreement is positioned were marked by the wonderful political fluency prevailing in Myanmar. After gaining independence in 1948, northern Myanmar, the region where Chinese nationalist troops, known as Kuomintang exiles, established bases when they withdrew after facing defeat at the hands of advancing communists. When the Communists established their strength in mainland China, they forced the then-ruling political elite in Burma to expel the exiles from the Kuomintang in Taiwan and other neighboring countries.
Like India, China signed an agreement on five principles of non-violent existence, known as the Panchsheel Agreement, with Myanmar Prime Minister U Nu in 1954. However, the context in which the agreement was signed was very biased in relation to Myanmar, as China troops were already inside Myanmar and claimed parts of northern Myanmar. This has been accompanied by the large influx of others from China to Myanmar, as it has replaced the demographics of many Cities in Myanmar.
After several rounds of negotiations between the two sides amid fierce forces fighting in Myanmar, the two countries agreed to a border in October 1960. It turns out that pragmatism prevailed. There is a territorial exchange based on geography and administrative ease. There is no doubt that the agreement between the two countries has largely remained, but the scenario it has followed in northern Myanmar over the more than six decades is nothing less than a civil war.
The 3 mountainous regions, Kachin, Wa and Shan, inhabited by the country’s ethnic and devout minorities facing political and economic grievances, are in-house areas of Myanmar affected by the insurgency, with strong cross-border influence from China. China’s state institutions, adding the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) and the regional government of neighboring Yunnan Province, make movements with all stakeholders, adding rebel groups across the border in a calibrated and complicated manner. The insurgency is considered a security risk and national unity through the Burmese ethnic majority, which lives in the plains of the Irrawaddy Delta, which fits into the structure of the force with the raison d’etre of the army’s domination.
Wa State, which suspects that the military, army and cross-border civilian economy with China, is de facto autonomous and there is a modus vivendi between the Tatmadaw, the local call of the Myanmar Army, and the Wa United State Army since 1989.
In Kachin, China maintains relations with the Kachin Independence Army (KIA), a rebel organization active in the region, as well as With Tatmadaw. The domain has jade mines, which are the site of many victims, as the population paints as miners in inhospidic and harmful conditions. On July 2, a landslide at a mine in the town of Hpakant in Kachin state killed 172 people. China is the largest jade market, as rich Chinese consider it an auspicious stone. The price of the illegal jade industry is several times that of the legal industry, creating a corrupt ecosystem of Tatmadaw officials, KIA commanders and the Chinese market.
Arriving on the genuine Sino-Indian line of approximately 2167 miles, about one-fifth of China’s territory is the Tibet Autonomous Region (ART) and is this restless region bordering India. Tibet is at the center of China’s fashionable conception of a nation-state. The first interim president of Republican China, Sun Yat-Sen, had raised the concept of the Republic of five nationalities: Han, Manchu, Mongolian, Hui (Muslim) and Tibetan.
China has occasionally resorted to diplomatic intimidation to save him, the Dalai Lama, from bringing together other world leaders. In October 2009, even then-U.S. candidate Barack Obama made the decision not to meet with him because it was an idea to have an effect on the American candidate’s upcoming vacation in China. Ladakh and Arunachal Pradesh, the two spaces adjacent to the Chinese-Indian effective line of control, have registered centuries-old transnational ties, adding advertisement and devoted links to Tibet. The Dalai Lama visits both regions as part of his devoted duties. In this regard, regardless of whether or not the border with India was demarcated, China’s homogenization strategy would have continued to see its borders or understand spaces in the other aspect as a security threat.
Borderlands, populated by ethnic and devout minorities, are more than a territorial area to conquer and administer. An undeniable border line does not end the centuries-old influence of neighboring regions. The Burmese majority’s plan to identify a strong, non-violent geographic region would possibly have resolved a confrontation with China, but has failed to end the lack of trust within its borders. Although for other reasons, the same is true of China’s borders, which are close to India.
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