Here in Myanmar, where political change has been numbingly slow for a half-century, a new leadership is trying to embrace rapid transition from within. The government has freed political prisoners, held elections (with more on the way), begun economic reform and is intensively courting foreign investment.
Understandably, the international community, which has long punished Myanmar’s authoritarian regime with sanctions, remains cautious. Reforms are being introduced so fast that even renowned experts on the country are uncertain about what to make of them.
However, it is clear to me that this moment in Myanmar’s history represents a real opportunity for permanent change — an opportunity that the international community must not miss. It is time for the world to move the agenda for Myanmar forward, not just by offering assistance, but by removing the sanctions that have now become an impediment to the country’s transformation.
So far, that transformation, initiated following legislative elections in November 2010, has been breathtaking. With the military, which had held exclusive power from 1962, retaining about 25 percent of the seats, there were fears that the election would be a facade. However, the government that emerged has turned out to reflect fundamental concerns of Myanmar’s citizens far better than was anticipated.
Under the leadership of Burmese President Thein Sein, the authorities have responded to calls for a political and economic opening. Progress has been made on peace agreements with ethnic-minority insurgents — conflicts rooted in the divide-and-rule strategy of colonialism, which the country’s post-independence rulers maintained for more than six decades. The Nobel laureate Daw Aung San Suu Kyi was not only released from house arrest, but is now campaigning hard for a parliamentary seat in next month’s by-elections.
On the economic front, unprecedented transparency has been introduced into the budgetary process. Expenditures on healthcare and education have been doubled, albeit from a low base. Licensing restrictions in a number of key areas have been loosened. The government has even committed itself to moving toward unifying its complicated exchange-rate system.
The spirit of hope in the country is palpable, though some older people, who saw earlier moments of apparent relaxation of authoritarian rule come and go, remain cautious. Perhaps that is why some in the international community are similarly hesitant about easing Myanmar’s isolation. However, most Burmese sense that if changes are managed well, the country will have embarked on an irreversible course.
Last month, I participated in seminars in Yangon and the recently constructed capital, Naypyidaw, organized by one of the country’s leading economists, U Myint. The events were momentous, owing both to large and actively engaged audiences (more than a thousand in Yangon), and to the thoughtful and moving presentations by two world-famous Burmese economists who had left the country in the 1960s and were back for their first visit in more than four decades.
My Columbia University colleague Ronald Findlay said that one of them, 91-year-old Hla Myint, who had held a professorship at the London School of Economics, was the father of the most successful development strategy ever devised, that of an open economy and export-led growth. That blueprint has been used throughout Asia in recent decades, most notably in China. Now, perhaps, it has finally come home.
I delivered a lecture in Myanmar in December 2009. At that time, one had to be careful, given the government’s sensitivities, even about how one framed the country’s problems — its poverty, lack of rural productivity and unskilled workforce. Now caution has been replaced by a sense of urgency in dealing with these and other challenges, and by awareness of the need for technical and other forms of assistance. (Relative to its population and income, Myanmar is one of the world’s smallest recipients of international assistance.)
There is much debate about what explains the rapidity of Myanmar’s current pace of change. Perhaps its leaders recognized that the country, once the world’s largest rice exporter, was falling far behind its neighbors. Perhaps they heard the message of the Arab Spring or simply understood that, with more than 3 million Burmese living abroad, it was impossible to isolate the country from the rest of the world or prevent ideas from seeping in from its neighbors. Whatever the reason, change is occurring and the opportunity that it represents is undeniable.
However, many of the international sanctions, whatever their role in the past, now seem counterproductive. Financial sanctions, for instance, discourage the development of a modern and transparent financial system, integrated with the rest of the world. The resulting cash-based economy is an invitation to corruption.
Likewise, restrictions that prevent socially responsible companies based in advanced industrial countries from doing business in Myanmar have left the field open to less scrupulous firms. We should welcome Myanmar’s desire for guidance and advice from multilateral institutions and the UN Development Program; instead, we continue to limit the role that these institutions can play in the country’s transition.
Whenever we withhold assistance or impose sanctions, we need to think carefully about who bears the burden in bringing about the changes that we seek. Opening up trade in agriculture and textiles — and even providing preferences of the kind that are offered to other poor countries — would likely benefit directly the poor farmers who make up 70 percent of the population, as well as create new jobs. The wealthy and powerful can circumvent financial sanctions, though at a cost; ordinary citizens cannot so easily escape the impact of international-pariah status.
We have seen the Arab Spring blossom haltingly in a few countries; in others, it is still uncertain whether it will bear fruit. Myanmar’s transition is in some ways quieter, without the fanfare of Twitter and Facebook, but it is no less real — and no less deserving of support.
Joseph Stiglitz is University Professor at Columbia University and a Nobel laureate in economics.
Copyright: Project Syndicate
A series of strong earthquakes in Hualien County not only caused severe damage in Taiwan, but also revealed that China’s power has permeated everywhere. A Taiwanese woman posted on the Internet that she found clips of the earthquake — which were recorded by the security camera in her home — on the Chinese social media platform Xiaohongshu. It is spine-chilling that the problem might be because the security camera was manufactured in China. China has widely collected information, infringed upon public privacy and raised information security threats through various social media platforms, as well as telecommunication and security equipment. Several former TikTok employees revealed
At the same time as more than 30 military aircraft were detected near Taiwan — one of the highest daily incursions this year — with some flying as close as 37 nautical miles (69kms) from the northern city of Keelung, China announced a limited and selected relaxation of restrictions on Taiwanese agricultural exports and tourism, upon receiving a Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) delegation led by KMT legislative caucus whip Fu Kun-chi (傅崑萁). This demonstrates the two-faced gimmick of China’s “united front” strategy. Despite the strongest earthquake to hit the nation in 25 years striking Hualien on April 3, which caused
In the 2022 book Danger Zone: The Coming Conflict with China, academics Hal Brands and Michael Beckley warned, against conventional wisdom, that it was not a rising China that the US and its allies had to fear, but a declining China. This is because “peaking powers” — nations at the peak of their relative power and staring over the precipice of decline — are particularly dangerous, as they might believe they only have a narrow window of opportunity to grab what they can before decline sets in, they said. The tailwinds that propelled China’s spectacular economic rise over the past
President-elect William Lai (賴清德) is to accede to the presidency this month at a time when the international order is in its greatest flux in three decades. Lai must navigate the ship of state through the choppy waters of an assertive China that is refusing to play by the rules, challenging the territorial claims of multiple nations and increasing its pressure on Taiwan. It is widely held in democratic capitals that Taiwan is important to the maintenance and survival of the liberal international order. Taiwan is strategically located, hemming China’s People’s Liberation Army inside the first island chain, preventing it from