Democracy in Myanmar grew uneasily over a couple of decades through a delicate balance of external and internal powers, the military, the tribal militias, the Thai influence groups, the United States and, of course, neighboring China.

All these forces cooperated to find a political balance that would support the democratic forces led by Aung San Suu Kyi and partially sideline the top brass.

The coup last Monday in Yangon came about as US-China ties are unraveling and thus the old balance in Myanmar no longer holds. The US is against the coup, but also China was unhappy about it, as shown in the cautious, unsupportive reaction of the Global Times. Beijing has vast, pervasive relations all over Myanmar.

China has a great interest in the stability of the country and virtually none in rocking the boat. Yet, in Beijing it is quite likely they didn’t see the coup coming and didn’t see that fraught ties with the US would have vast, unintended consequences. It could be the beginning of an unintentional domino effect for China on the global scene. It is possible that China missed it and it is missing it because of a larger issue of mindset.


Twice China didn’t understand where and what was the great challenge and threat. The first time was between the late 16th century and early 17th centuries when the Spanish reached China from Macao. The other time was exactly 200 years later when the English reached China, also from the south, near Macao, in Hong Kong.

In both cases, China didn’t understand the rules of global trade, and by failing to adjust to and master those rules, it created indirect economic crises that spilled into social and political crises that eventually led to the demise of the Ming dynasty and then the Qing dynasty. Is this time different for China?

Before going into this, we should look at the genesis of the present imperial power, the USA. “From the beginning of its existence, the United States was engaged in diplomacy, power politics, wars, and every foreign entanglement imaginable. That was inevitable. Nations rarely last long if they aren’t aware of foreign threats and opportunities,” argues George Friedman.

Jeffrey Wasserstrom wrote, “Living in China is confusing now.” This is because, as the novelist Yan Lianke said, “it can feel like being in North Korea and the United States at the same time.” I recall smiling and nodding when he made the remark, during a roundtable discussion at Duke University’s campus outside Shanghai three years ago.

In one brief sentence, he captured just how special and strange China can seem – “a country that has both gulags and Gap stores.”

These contradictions make it difficult for China to deal with the world, but also for the US, the present global leader, to deal with China. Both don’t understand each other and thus fail to address the other properly.