Where China Meets India: Burma and the New Crossroads of Asia (36 page)

‘
Through the
1990
s
’: For an overview of Burma in the 1990s, see David Steinberg,
The Future of Burma: Crisis and Choice in Myanmar
(New York: Asia Society, 1990). On Burma’s foreign policy, see Jürgen Haacke,
Myanmar’s foreign policy: domestic influences and international implications
(London: Routledge for the Institute for International and Strategic Studies, 2006).

Lords of the Sunset

‘
In the mountains
’: For a fresh interpretation of lowland-upland relations, see James C. Scott,
The Art of Not Being Governed: An Anarchist History of Upland Southeast Asia
(New Haven: Yale University Press, 2009).

‘
As with early
’: On Shan history, see Sai Aung Tun,
History of the Shan State: From Its Origins to
1962 (Chiangmai: Silkworm, 2009), pp. 89–504; James George Scott,
Gazetteer of Upper Burma and the Shan States
, Volumes 1 and 2 (Rangoon: Printed by the Superintendent, Government Printing, Burma, 1900).

‘
Hsipaw had been
’: On Hsipaw, see Maurice Collis,
Lords of the Sunset
(London: Faber and Faber, 1938), pp. 167–71; Inge Sargent,
Twilight Over Burma: My Life as a Shan Princess
(Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 1994).

‘
Herbert Hoover
’:
The Memoirs of Herbert Hoover: The Years of Adventure,
1874–1920 (New York: Macmillan, 1952), p. 91. Herbert Hoover is incidentally one of only three American presidents ever to come to Burma. The first was Civil War hero Ulysses Grant, who stopped in Rangoon during his post-retirement round-the-world tour in the 1870s. And the last was Richard Nixon as Dwight D. Eisenhower’s Vice President. It was in 1953 and Cold War anti-American feeling among some in the generally left-wing Burmese student community was high. ‘Go Home Nixon, Valet of Wall Street’, read one of the signs greeting the future president. He paid his respects, shoeless but with socks, at the Shwedagon Pagoda (accompanied by my grandfather, who was then an aide to the Burmese prime minister) and stopped his motorcade on one occasion to debate with placard-waving students.

‘
The official report
’: Quoted in Shelby Tucker,
Burma: The Curse of Independence
(London: Pluto Press, 2001), p. 124.

‘
But the country
’: On the civil war, see Bertil Lintner,
Burma in Revolt: Opium and Insurgency Since
1948 (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1944); Bertil Lintner,
The Rise and Fall of the Communist Party of Burma (CPB)
(Ithaca, NY: Southeast Asia Program, Cornell University, 1990); Robert H. Taylor,
Foreign and Domestic Consequences of the KMT Intervention in Burma
(Ithaca, NY: Southeast Asia Program, Dept. of Asian Studies, Cornell University, 1973). Martin Smith,
Burma: Insurgency and the Politics of Ethnicity
(London: Zed Books, 1991); Hugh Tinker,
The Union of Burma: A Study of the First Years of Independence
(London: Oxford University Press, 1961); Frank Trager,
Burma from Kingdom to Republic: A Historical and Political Analysis
(London: Pall Mall, 1966).

‘
And those who stayed
’: On the history of the narcotics trade, see Alfred McCoy,
The Politics of Heroin in Southeast Asia
(New York: Harper, 1973); on more current developments, see Bertil Lintner and Michael Black,
Merchants of Madness: The Methamphetamine Explosion in the Golden Triangle
(Chiangmai: Silkworm, 2009).

‘
gratuitous act
’: Shan Women’s Action Network,
Forbidden Glimpses of Shan State: A Brief Alternative Guide
, November 2009.

New Frontiers

‘
The British botanist
’: Quoted in Alan Rabinowitz,
Life in the Valley of Death: The Fight to Save Tigers in a Land of Guns, Gold, and Greed
(Washington DC: Island Press, 2008), pp. 145–6.

‘
Twenty years ago
’: Rolf Carriere. ‘Responding to Myanmar’s Silent Emergency: The Urgent Case for International Humanitarian Relief and Development Assistance’, in Peter Carey (ed.),
Burma: The Challenge of Change in a Divided Society
(Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1997), pp. 209–10.

‘
During the early decades
’: On the China–Burma border in late colonial times, see Beatrix Metford,
Where China Meets Burma: Life and Travel in the Burma-China Border Lands
(London: Blackie & Son, 1935).

‘
What has emerged
’: On the various insurgent armies and militias and their recent relations with the Burmese army, see Mary P. Callahan,
Political Authority in Burma’s Ethnic Minority States: Devolution, Occupation, and Coexistence
(Washington DC: East–West Center, 2007); Tom Kramer,
The United Wa State Party: Narco-Army or Ethnic Nationalist Party?
(Washington DC: East–West Center, 2007); Martin Smith,
State of Strife: The Dynamics of Ethnic Conflict in Burma
(Washington DC: East–West Center, 2007); Zaw Oo and Win Min,
Assessing Burma’s Ceasefire Accords
(Washington DC: East–West Center, 2007).

‘
Even stranger
’: Linter and Black,
Merchants of Madness
, pp. 79–85.

‘
A report in
2010’: Xu Ling, ‘Wildlife trade on the Vhina–Myanmar border’, in
State of Wildlife Trade in China
2008,
TRAFFIC
East Asia China Programme Report 2010) (
http://www.traffic.org/general-reports/traffic_pub_gen34.pdf
), p. 11; see also Adam H. Oswell, ‘The Big Cat Trade in Myanmar and Thailand: A
TRAFFIC
Southeast Asia Report’ (
TRAFFIC
Southeast Asia, 2010).

‘
illegal trafficking
’: Juliet Shwe Gaung, ‘Forced marriages driving human trafficking, UN says’,
Myanmar Times
, Vol. 26, No. 512, 1–7 March 2010.

‘
Over the past
’: Jonathan Shieber and Wan Xu, ‘China Consortium Starts Work On Myanmar Hydroelectric Project’,
Dow Jones Newswires
, 24 March 2010.

Part Two Southwestern Barbarians

The Malacca Dilemma

‘
Around the time
’: Steven F. Sage,
Ancient Sichuan and the Unification of China
(Albany: State University of New York Press, 1992), pp. 106–16.

‘
In the late
1970
s
’: On modern Chinese history, see John King Fairbank and Merle Goldman,
China: A New History
(Second Enlarged Edition) (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2006); Jonathan Fenby,
The Penguin History of Modern China: The Fall and Rise of a Great Power,
1850–2009 (London: Penguin, 2009); Immanuel C. Y. Hsü,
The Rise of Modern China
(New York: Oxford University Press, 2000); John Keay,
China: A History
(London: Harper Press, 2008); Jonathan Spence,
The Search for Modern China
(New York: Norton, 1990).

‘
The results
’: On China’s recent ‘rise’, see C. Fred Bergsten et al.,
China’s Rise
(Washington, DC: Peterson Institute for International Economics: Center for Strategic and International Studies, 2008); Martin Jacques,
When China Rules the World
:
The End of the Western World and the Birth of a New Global Order
(London: Allen Lane, 2009); John Kynge,
China Shakes the World: A Titan’s Rise and Troubled Future–and the Challenge for America
(New York: First Mariner Books, 2007); Susan L. Shirk,
China, Fragile Superpower: How China’s Internal Politics Could Derail Its Peaceful Rise
(New York: Oxford University Press, 2007).

‘
Beijing is also an old
’: On the history of Beijing, see Lillian M. Li and Alison Dray-Novey,
Beijing: From Imperial Capital to Olympic City
(New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007).

‘
To the south
’: On China’s languages, see S. Robert Ramsey,
The Languages of China
(Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1987).

‘
In November
2006’: Joseph Kahn, ‘China, shy giant, shows signs of shedding its false modesty’,
New York Times
, 9 December 2006.

‘
It’s like a man
’: Cui Xiaohuo and Zhang Haizhou, ‘Top military officers lash out at US espionage’,
China Daily
, 3 November 2009.

‘
an article in the
Guardian’: Jason Burke, ‘India’s deals with Sri Lanka heighten stakes in “Great Game”’ with Beijing’,
Guardian
, 9 June 2010.

‘
Others were more blunt
’: Ian Bremmer, ‘Gathering Storm: America and China in 2020’,
World Affairs
, July/August 2010. On China’s relations with its neighbours, see David C. Kang,
China Rising: Peace, Power, and Order in East Asia
(New York: Columbia University Press, 2008), Chapter Six; David M. Lampton,
Three Faces of Chinese Power: Might, Money, and Minds
(Berkeley: University of California Press, 2008) pp. 164–206.

‘
The first was the huge
’:
China Statistical Yearbook
2010; see also ‘All the Parties in China: Comparing Chinese provinces with countries’,
The Economist
, 24 February 2011 (
http://www.economist.com/content/chinese_equivalents
).

‘
Over the past twenty
’: On China’s policies towards Burma, see Li Chenyang, ‘China’s Policies towards Myanmar: A Successful Model for Dealing with the Myanmar Issue?’, in
Myanmar: Prospects for Change
(Select Publishing: Singapore, 2010); International Crisis Group, ‘China’s Myanmar Strategy: Elections, Ethnic Politics and Economics’,
Asia Briefing
, No. 112, 21 September 2010.

‘
Chinese civilization
’: On the expansion of Chinese civilization, see for example, Peter Bellwood, ‘Asian Farming Diasporas? Agriculture, Languages, and Genes in China and Southeast Asia’, in Mariam T. Stark (ed.),
Archaeology of Asia
(Malden, MA: Blackwell, 2006), pp. 96–118; C. P. Fitzgerald,
The Southern Expansion of the Chinese People
(Bangkok: White Lotus, 1972); Jacques Gernet and J. R. Foster,
A History of Chinese Civilization
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), pp. 1–129; Charles Holcombe,
The Genesis of East Asia,
221
BC–AD
907 (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 2001); Harold J. Wiens,
Han Chinese Expansion in South China
(Hamden, CT: Shoestring Press, 1967. On early trade links to the Indian Ocean, see also Li Qingxin (William W. Wang trans.),
Maritime Silk Road
(Beijing: China Intercontinental Press, 2000), pp. 7–29.

‘
No one understands
’: On the southward spread of the Chinese language, see Nicholas Ostler,
Empires of the Word: A Language History of the World
(New York: Harper, 2005), pp. 134–57.

‘
Wu kingdom
’: George van Driem,
Languages of the Himalayas: An Ethno linguistic Handbook of the Greater Himalayan Region
(London: Brill Academic Publishers, 2002), p. 433.

‘
kingdom of Yue
’: Edward H. Schafer:
The Vermillion Bird: T’ang Images of the South
(London: University of California Press, 1967).

South of the Clouds

‘
It was a city
’: Jim Goodman,
The Exploration of Yunnan
(Kunming?: Yunnan People’s Publishing House, 2002), pp. 251–264; Graham Hutchings,
Modern China: A Guide to a Century of Change
(Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2003) pp. 482–3.

‘
Two thousand years
’: For an exhaustive and fresh overview of Yunnan’s history and its regional connections, see Bin Yang, ‘Horses, Silver, and Cowries: Yunnan in Global Perspective’,
Journal of World History
, 15:3 (September 2004); Bin Yang,
Between Winds and Clouds: The Making of Yunnan (Second Century BCE–Twentieth Century CE)
(New York: Columbia University Press, 2009), especially chapter 2.

‘
It was a military society, very hierarchical
’: Tzehuey Chiou-Peng, ‘Horse in the Dian Culture of Yunnan’, in Elisabeth A. Bacus, Ian Glover, Peter D. Sharrock (eds),
Interpreting Southeast Asia’s Past
, Volume 2:
Monument, Image and Text: Selected Papers from the
10
th International Conference of the European Association of Southeast Asian Archaeologists
.

‘
During the height
’: Francis Allard, ‘Frontiers and Boundaries: The Han Empire from its Southern Periphery’, in Stark,
Archaeology of Asia
, pp. 233–54.

‘
In the thirteenth
’: Marco Polo (ed. and trans. Henry Yule),
The Book of Ser Marco Polo, the Venetian Concerning the Kingdoms and Marvels of the East
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010), Vol. 2, p. 39.

‘
The Yao
’: On Chinese campaigns against the Yao and the Miao, see Mark Elvin,
The Retreat of the Elephants: An Environmental History of China
(New Haven: Yale University Press, 2004), pp. 216–72.

‘
In Yunnan too there would be rebellions
’: Piper Rae Gaubatz,
Beyond the Great Wall: Urban form and transformation on the Chinese frontiers
(Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1996), p. 79.

‘
The Chinese are
’: Quoted in ‘The Legacy of Immigration in Southwest China, 1250–1850’,
Annales de demographie historique
(1982), pp. 279–304.

‘
The most important
’: On the warlords, see Fenby,
The Penguin History of Modern China
, chapter 8; also David Bonavia,
China’s Warlords
(Hong Kong: Oxford University Press, 1995).