There is “certainly an element of greater power competition in Myanmar,” the Stimson Center’s China director says in an exclusive interview for the latest edition of the “Threat Status Influencers” video series.
Ms. Sun discusses the strategic relevance of the violent civil war gripping the Southeast Asian nation, where a China-backed military junta and a patchwork of pro-democracy rebel groups are intersecting with Cold War-style dynamics between Washington and Beijing. Myanmar, which is home to key Chinese oil and gas pipelines leading to the Indian Ocean, occupies a “critical geopolitical location for China,” says Ms. Sun, who calls Myanmar “China’s corridor to South Asia.”
“When China thinks about a potential, let’s say, Taiwan contingency with the United States, one of the first things that will come to their mind is their ‘Sea Line of Communication,’” she says. “Their import of oil and gas from the Middle East and North Africa will have to travel through the Indian Ocean, through the Strait of Malacca, then enter the South China Sea and come back to the Chinese coast. … That [sea line] is extremely vulnerable for China from an energy security point of view. That’s where Myanmar comes into play.”