China will back whoever guarantees control and stability in Myanmar

China will care little for the thousands of dead and wounded and the millions of victims of the abrupt interruption of democracy in Myanmar if the Burmese military consolidates its coup d'état, albeit through increasingly brutal repression. Beijing was surely satisfied with the progress of the democratic process, which had succeeded in gradually opening the country to the outside world and making it presentable, with a perceptible improvement in its economy, a notable if uneven decline in poverty levels and, above all, a situation of relative stability.  

Despite the tight control of information imposed by the military under the command of General Min Aung Hlaing, thousands of young people go out every day to protest and face the real fire of the coup leaders, while the latter are unable to prevent the immense flow of images and testimonies of atrocious repression. This situation complicates China's plans for Myanmar, which it wants to turn into one of the pillars of the New Silk Road, making it the great alternative to the strategic Strait of Malacca. The latter, a funnel of barely three kilometres at its narrowest part and just over 300 at its widest, carries no less than 60 per cent of the world's commercial traffic and 80 per cent of its oil, destined for all of Southeast Asia, as well as China itself, Korea and Japan. 100,000 large ships pass through it annually. A corridor that China does not control, and whose alternative is precisely Myanmar, on which it is pouring gigantic infrastructure projects: the deep-water port of Kyaukpyu, the Muse to Mandalay highway or the Muse-Mandalay-Yunnan railway, as well as the oil and gas pipelines between the port of Kyaukpyu and Kunming, the capital of Yunnan.  

There is no reason to believe that China directly instigated the coup, since the government of Nobel Laureate Aung San Suu Kyi's National League for Democracy (NLD) was no different from the military in its international relations, and especially in its more than good neighbourly relations with China. Although Ms Aung San had lost much of her aura in Western public opinion, she had achieved an undisputed leadership, translated into successive landslide election victories, the last one in November 2020 (258 seats out of 440). Vetoed by the military for the presidency or the head of government, she was the de facto leader of the government as State Counsellor and Minister of Foreign Affairs.  

She knows the military well - she is the daughter of the general who won the country's independence in 1948 - and they fear the charisma of a 75-year-old woman who probably harboured plans to speed up the democratic process in the new legislature, which would entail a gradual loss of military privileges. The Burmese constitution, drafted by them, reserves three crucial ministries for them: Defence, Borders and Interior. But they also directly or indirectly control the ruby and jade mines, a large part of the banks and the hotel chains that began to flourish with the opening up of the country and the boom in tourism.  

All this does not seem to be enough for those who aspire to total control of the country's resources. To do so, they will have to take the country back to the dark days of an iron-fisted dictatorship that isolated the former Burma for 50 years. And which, were it not for international pressure, and especially the catastrophe caused by Cyclone Nargis in 2008, might have kept its 54 million inhabitants in misery, silence and backwardness.  

As the Asia geopolitics specialists Paloma Almoguera and Marta Nuevo stated in a web conference organised by the International Press Club, "those who have tasted freedom and democracy will hardly conform, if not by the force of implacable repression, to such a brutal setback". Both analysts also agreed that China will maintain its policy of non-interference, but will defend its interests. It will therefore back whoever guarantees that it is in control of the country and maintains stability. And, for the moment, that key is held by the military coup plotters, whose first action will be to put Aung San Suu Kyi completely out of circulation.  

It remains to be seen whether the United States will view all this with mere curiosity or will try to prevent Myanmar, whoever governs, from becoming a new protectorate of China in such a vital part of the world.