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Chinese traders’ pursuit of Myanmar’s riches breeds resentment

MANDALAY — From damp and drizzly London, the siren of British imperialism, Rudyard Kipling wrote a poem that captured the palm trees, pagodas and temple bells of Myanmar during colonial rule.

A night market in Mandalay. Chinese dominance in Myanmar’s economy is leaving the residents filled with hatred as the immigrants get richer, scooping up jade and timber for the market back home. Photo: The New York Times

A night market in Mandalay. Chinese dominance in Myanmar’s economy is leaving the residents filled with hatred as the immigrants get richer, scooping up jade and timber for the market back home. Photo: The New York Times

MANDALAY — From damp and drizzly London, the siren of British imperialism, Rudyard Kipling wrote a poem that captured the palm trees, pagodas and temple bells of Myanmar during colonial rule.

The romance of that verse, “Mandalay”, became a refrain for the exotic East, and of this city, in particular, once a royal capital with a stunning palace. Written in 1890, it has resonated ever since:

“On the road to Mandalay, Where the flyin’ fishes play, An’ the dawn comes up like thunder outer China — crost the Bay!”

Kipling never visited Mandalay, having imagined it from a brief sojourn in a city called Moulmein, now Mawlamyine, several hundred kilometres south.

But perhaps if he arrived in Mandalay today, he would find its charms faded — buried under the demands of Chinese commerce, and the hustle of Chinese businessmen scooping up jade and timber for the market back home.

Residents view them as interlopers who are taking advantage of Mandalay’s location close to India and Bangladesh, Laos and Thailand, as well as a large swath of southern China. And some of the Chinese view the residents as beneath them, slow at business and also at making money.

At the open-air jade market, Chinese businessmen haggle with traders from Myanmar selling rough green slabs of the gemstone, freshly dug from mines in remote areas to the north. Deals have slowed. Prices are down in China, flattened by the slowing economy and a fierce anti-corruption campaign.

On a recent morning, the mood was surly along the rows of wooden stalls where the Chinese inspect the jade for quality and colour.

“It’s dirty and chaotic, and sometimes dangerous,” said Mr Zhu Xuefei, a jade buyer from Guangdong province in China. Myanmar is too poor to install the closed-circuit television cameras that are ubiquitous in China to help prevent robberies, he complained.

Chinese traders have been coming to Mandalay since before the mid-19th century, when the city was created on the banks of the Irrawaddy River as the royal redoubt. Records show a Chinese temple from 1773. Some sailed down the river; others rode south from Yunnan province in mule caravans ferrying silver and silk. The Chinese had a light touch.

Now, the Chinese dominate the economy, their mansions lining the streets of an enclave called New Town, symbols of the wealth accrued in the underground drug, timber and mineral trades in the northern Shan and Wa states of Myanmar.

The city has become a sprawl of about one million people on a scorched, dusty plain. George Orwell, who lived here briefly in the 1920s, dismissed it as having just five features: Pagodas, pariahs, pigs, priests and prostitutes.

To soothe raw feelings between Chinese and Myanmar customers, some teahouses display a photograph of the recent meeting in Beijing between the leader of Myanmar, Aung San Suu Kyi, and China’s President, Xi Jinping.

The barely disguised contempt of the Chinese towards the Burmese — “We only need to pay US$2.50 (S$3.50) a day for labour,” said Mr Zhu, the jade buyer — is returned with resentment that ebbs and flows according to the political and economic climate.

“The new Chinese try to influence our culture by donating to temples and religious associations,” said Mr Kyaw Zan Hla, 69, former editor of a defunct leftist newspaper, The People. “They don’t understand the Myanmar people’s tradition of respect to elders, teachers and monks.”

When remnants of China’s Nationalist Army fled to northern Myanmar after the Communist victory in 1949, they settled in Mandalay with their families.

The children of the Nationalist Army veterans are now in their 60s. Some practise tai chi in the soft dawn hours on a walkway near the palace walls. Mr U Shwe, an enthusiastic man dressed in shorts and sneakers, made his tai chi moves with a fan fully opened in one hand and a silver sword in the other. Chinese music boomed from a portable tape deck.

But even here, a condescending attitude towards the Myanmar people is prevalent. “We hire a lot of them,” said Ms Xu, 65, who owns a metal factory and gave only her last name. “The Myanmar people are very easy-going. They believe everything is predetermined, so they accept everything that happens in life.”

In the 1980s, after the Chinese government stopped its support of the Communist Party of Burma, a new wave of entrepreneurs from China’s then-fledgling market economy flooded over the border.

They found lucrative deals trading in drugs and gems in the restive northern provinces, and bought identity cards and citizenship papers from corrupt officials of the military government, Mr Kyaw Zan Hla, the former editor, said in his library filled with old newspapers, magazines and first edition books, including a yellowed copy of Orwell’s Burmese Days.

In 1984, when a fire swept through downtown Mandalay, burning the mostly wooden structures to the ground, the Chinese acted. “The Myanmar people had no money, and the Chinese bought the land which only they could afford,” he said. “Naturally, there are tensions between the newcomers and the Myanmar people — the Myanmar people look at the Chinese with hatred because they are very haughty.”

The Chinese know that many residents are offended by their flashier lifestyle. They are fearful of reprisals, or of a repetition of anti-Chinese riots here in the 1960s.

When violence broke out between Buddhists and Muslims in Mandalay several years ago, Chinese residents took extra measures to protect themselves, said Mr Zhang Xucheng, a businessman.

The Chinese are curbing excessive shows of wealth. “In the Chinese schools, they are telling the children not to be confrontational, not to live extravagantly,” Mr Zhang said. “There is no Blue Label whiskey, only Red Label and Black Label. We limit the number of cars for a wedding. There used to be 40 or 50. Now they have only 16 cars.” THE NEW YORK TIMES

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