Is the Myitsone Dam Burma’s WMD?

The main investor in the project is the China Power Investment Corporation, a state-run Chinese company.

Since the previous Burmese junta came to power in 1988, China has been a major source of arms supplies, political support, aid and loans to preserve the brutal regime, and now China is one of the Burma’s largest trading partners and investors.

China accounted for US $ 8.3 billion, or 41.4 percent, of all foreign direct investment in Burma in the 2010 fiscal year. China’s investments include hydropower projects, oil and gas, and pipelines carrying natural gas and oil from the port of Kyaukpyu on Burma's western coastline to China’s Yunnan Province.

As a result of these massive investments, many in Burma feel that the country is in effect becoming a province of China, and anti-Chinese feeling is on the rise. Last week, police arrested a man when he prepared to stage a peaceful solo protest near the Chinese Cultural Office in Rangoon. Since then, authorities dispatched riot police near the Chinese Embassy in the former capital to stop an additional planned protest.

If this continues, the campaign to save the Irrawaddy River may also become a campaign to rid the country from Chinese influence and reclaim the nation’s natural resources.

Critics have rightly pointed out that the current government should adhere to Chapter 1, Article 45 of the junta-drafted 2008 Constitution that says, “The Union shall protect and conserve the natural environment.” The irony of this provision is that decades of misrule by the military regime has squandered and depleted Burma’s wealth of natural resources for the benefit of China and an elite few in Burma, leaving many to wonder whether all of the country’s resources will be gone by the time true democracy is achieved.

Recently, the Brussels-based International Crisis Group released a report praising the new civilian regime and stating that President Thein Sein is reform-minded. Thus far, however, while showing some signs of superficial reform, Thein Sein has remained loyal to ex-junta chief Snr-Gen Than Shwe and continued to protect the interests of the previous military regime’s leaders and their cronies.

The people of Burma feel that they all belong to the Irrawaddy River—it is the country’s bloodline and a key to its culture. If Thein Sein is his own man and really wants reform, then he should begin his reforms by listening to the voices of the people and exercising his executive power to suspend the Myitsone Dam project. If he does so, the people in Burma may see him as visionary leader. But if he does not, then the growing campaign to save the Irrawaddy River may turn into a people’s campaign to take the matter into their own hands.