On February 1, Myanmar’s military apprehended Myanmar State Counsellor Aung San Suu Kyi, the president and other high-ranking government officials from the ruling party, and declared that Min Aung Hlaing, Commander-in-Chief of the Myanmar Armed Forces, had taken over the country’s administration. Flustered and exasperated, Biden, the new US president, sternly commanded the country to free the arrested, as well as threatening to impose sanctions on it, while the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of China only released a moderate and impartial statement on it.

On February 2, Politburo member of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) Yang Jiechi, who had been craving for paying a visit to the US since Biden took office, finally showed his face in the country on video, and the podium was set by the National Committee on United States–China Relations. After stringently criticizing the Trump administration for forcing through radical and erroneous anti-China policies, he said: “China never meddles in the internal affairs of the US, including its elections. China never exports its development model or seeks ideological confrontation. China has no intention to challenge or replace the US position in the world, or to carve out a sphere of influence. Likewise, we expect the US to respect China’s position and concerns on the Taiwan question. The US should stop interfering in the affairs of Hong Kong, Tibet and Xinjiang, which all matter to China’s sovereignty and territorial integrity, and stop attempts to hold back China’s development by meddling in China’s internal affairs.” Yang’s objective is crystal clear: continuing to seek a friendly response from Biden that Xi Jinping did not receive at the Davos Forum

China-Indochina Peninsula in Asia has always been a political arena where the CCP and the US compete with each other on equal terms, and Myanmar is the most important country on the peninsula. As early as in the times when the military government was boycotted by the West, China lent the country a helping hand, and a lot of its key military government functionaries were trained in China back then. The signing of the agreements on China’s Belt-and-Road projects about railways, petroleum pipelines and the port of Kyaukpyu, which is named “economic corridor”, lets China stay away from the economic blockade in the Strait of Malacca, and militarily access the Indian Ocean. The trade war waged by the Trump regime against China has inflicted heavy losses on China’s economy, benefiting a lot of Asian countries by making them hotspots where the processing industries resettled. The construction projects along Lancang and Mekong River driven by Mike Pompeo, which is militarily safeguarded by the US, funded and technologically supported by Japan, and joined by India, have pushed various countries on China-Indochina Peninsula into standing by the US. Take Myanmar. Not only did Aung San Suu Kyi take away the copper-mining and dam-construction projects from the Belt-and-Road economic corridor, but also cut the budget for construction of the port of Kyaukpyu, to which most importance is attached by the CCP, from USD10 billion to USD1 billion, as well as assigning the projects concerning two other ports nearby to Japan and India.

On January 17 and 18 last year, without giving any thought to the pandemic conditions, Xi Jinping went so far as to pay a visit to Myanmar to meet the government leaders and Commander-in-Chief of the Myanmar Armed Forces Min Aung Hlaing in an attempt to consolidate the Belt-and-Road projects. In the office where Xi Jinping delivered his CNY message this year, a new picture there that had been taken with children of ethnic minorities arranged by local authorities in Yunnan on January 19 on his way back to Beijing from Myanmar was found. As soon as Xi was back to Beijing, he gave instructions in handling Wuhan pneumonia. On January 20, Zhong Nanshan’s article about “human-to-human transmission” was released. On 23, city lockdown commenced. The visit to Myanmar is the latest trip abroad taken by Xi Jinping, and the picture in his office is in remembrance of the visit.

On January 11 and 12 this year, CCP’s Foreign Affairs Minister Wang Yi called on Myanmar, the objective of which was to keep on putting in practice what Xi Jinping achieved in his latest visit by promising to prioritize the provision of vaccine to the country. While meeting the president, Aung San Suu Kyi and Min Aung Hlaing, he openly lauded Myanmar’s military for “taking invigoration of the nation as their own responsibility, and contemplating the country’s future from the long-term perspective”. He indicated China “supports the necessary role of Myanmar’s military in the process of the national development and transformation”.

On January 31, a demonstration in support of the military in Myanmar was staged, followed by the coup d’etat the next day. Commentaries pointed out that this is a reversal of CCP’s own fortune conducted by the CCP itself. Results? It hinges on the Biden administration.

From January this year onward, a flood of military aircraft flew across the median line in the Taiwan Strait in the immediate proximity of Taiwan’s territorial airspace. From January 22 onward, two days after Biden was sworn in, the CCP dispatched military aircraft in bulk to enter into the south-west air defense identification zone of Taiwan on eight consecutive days to wage provocation. On January 23, 13 jet fighters were out on duty and on 24, 15 turned out for work, which was harassment of Taiwan in record scale. The USS Theodore Roosevelt (CVN-71) aircraft carrier entered the South China Sea on January 23 to carry out its “routine task”. On January 29, UK Financial Times reported the intelligence from the US and its allies showed that the pilot of CCP’s Xian H-6 jet bomber received an order to make a mock anti-battleship missile launch targeted at CVN-71.

Yao Cheng, former People’s Liberation Army (PLA) Naval Air Force Lieutenant Colonel in Training, said on YouTube video on March 19, 2019, that in the 80s and 90s last century, since a large number of CCP pilots defected to Taiwan, the technical unit of the Naval Air Force worked with experts from Israel to have developed a device installed in the engine named 24, which would be activated when nearing the median line in the Taiwan Strait to slow down the plane. If the jet fighter kept flying forward without making a U-turn, the engine would explode. However, since the device was always wrongly activated to kill the pilot and wreck the aircraft, 24 was uninstalled. Nowadays, pilots are put under political surveillance instead. Now they are seldom out on duty alone but mostly with one or three team members. They monitor one another and are empowered to shoot any of them down once unusual behavior is found.

On January 23, Ned Price, spokesperson of U.S. State Department, issued a statement: “The US is concerned with China’s ongoing intimidation of its neighbors, namely Taiwan.” He also said, “Our commitment to Taiwan is rock-solid.” What the Biden administration has to ponder over is how America has let CCP’s military grow as strong as it is now in just 20 years from Bill Clinton to Barack Obama.

(Lui Yue, veteran Chinese journalist)

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