缅甸当前政治经济观察

当前缅甸的政治、经济局势值得深入观察.制订新宪法是缅甸 "民主路线图"七步计划的第一步.经过将近9个月的休会之后,旨在为缅甸新宪法制订架构的新一轮国民大会于2006年10月10日复会,这有力地推动了缅甸民主路线图计划的实施.但是,美国的打压有可能导致缅甸军政府放缓民主改革的进程. 尽管如此,在"先经济,后政治"方针的指引下,缅甸政府凭借丰富的自然资源,借助中国的经验,开展经济改革工作.     

THE ROHINGYA CRISIS: WHY THE WORLD MUST ACT DECISIVELY

The dimensions of the crisis generated by the systematic persecution and expulsion of Rohingyas by the Myanmar authorities have been a sustained subject for global debate in these present times. The refusal of the Myanmar government to heed the world's warnings, its obfuscations in the matter of following through on the recommendations of the Annan Commission, and the dogged reluctance of Aung San Suu Kyi, once an ardent advocate of democracy and human rights in her country, to speak up for the Rohingyas have left the international community deeply disappointed. And disturbing too is a report by UN investigators on human rights abuses in Myanmar's Rakhine state. The problem does not look about to be resolved any time soon, with more than 750,000 Rohingyas taking refuge in neighbouring Bangladesh, pushing social dynamics in an already over-populated country to the edge. The fear is that the crisis could fester before getting dangerously out of hand, unless the global community goes for decisive action.     

The Pyu Ancient Cities World Heritage application: lessons from Myanmar on transnational advocacy networks

The announcement of 22 June 2014 from the World Heritage Committee that Pyu Ancient Cities had been added to the World Heritage List was significant for Myanmar, since it represented the country’s first World Heritage site. The World Heritage listing was the culmination of a process driven by a convergence of forces originating from within and outside of Myanmar. An interpretation of Pyu Ancient Cities as involving a transnational network of supporters echoes the work on transnational advocacy networks, which looks to phenomena involving transnational efforts to advance particular issues on behalf of activists against their government. This study examines Pyu Ancient Cities by producing a model that helps to illuminate the efficacy of its social network to engage in transnational advocacy.     

Authority in rebel groups: identity,recognition and the struggle over legitimacy

This article asks how rebel leaders capture and lose legitimacy within their own movement. Analysing these complex and often uneasy relations between elites and grassroots of insurgency is important for understanding the success or failure of peace processes. This is because internal contestation over authority between rival rebel leaders can drive a movement’s external strategy. Based on ethnographic research on the Karen and Kachin rebellions in Myanmar and insights from Political Sociology, the article suggests that leadership authority is linked to social identification and the claim to recognition among insurgent grassroots. If rebel leaders manage to satisfy their grassroots’ claim to recognition, their insurgent orders are stable. Failing this, their authority erodes and is likely to be challenged. These findings contribute to understanding insurgency and peace negotiations in Myanmar and civil wars more generally by showing how struggles over legitimacy within rebel groups drive wider dynamics of war and peace.     

缅甸蒲甘王朝政权与教权(上座部佛教)的关系

缅甸已被公认是上座部佛教在东南亚传播的最早和最重要的基地,上座部佛教在缅甸社会和国家政治生活中起着举足轻重的作用。在古代,上座部佛教一直同王权保持着紧密的联系。政、教关系作为一种重要的政治关系,很大程度上反映着缅甸封建国家的政治发展状况。本文试对缅甸蒲甘王朝时期政权与教权(上座部佛教)之间的关系进行一番分析和探讨,理清其沿革发展的脉络,揭示缅甸蒲甘王朝时期政教关系的特点,为进一步探究缅甸整个封建社会时期的政教关系作些铺垫。     

Reworking Bandung internationalism: decolonization and postcolonial futurism in Burma/Myanmar

ABSTRACT

This commentary examines how futurity has been imagined across politics and political economy in Burma/Myanmar. Three areas are discussed: the revolutionary horizons of anti-colonialists, who combined Buddhist and Marxist ideas of historical progress; the developmental socialism of the early independence area, with its industrial telos and modernist commitments; and a contemporary development project in southern Myanmar, where processes of dispossession are troubling earlier temporal imaginaries. I suggest that a vision of postcolonial transformation coheres across anti-colonial and early independence claims to futurity. This temporal imaginary, which I call postcolonial futurism, promises transitions from farm to factory, peasant to the proletariat, and precapital to capital. This imaginary resonated widely. Today, however, scholars of South and Southeast Asia argue that modernist promises of transition now lack empirical and political purchase amid ongoing dispossession and trends towards low-wage, informal labour. Yet in the wake of postcolonial futurism, responses to dispossession are creating novel political possibilities. Responding to Kuan-Hsing Chen’s call to rework Bandung internationalism in the present, I consider how struggles over dispossession today indicate both openings and limits for the making of new political futures. Integrating Glen Coulthard’s work on colonialism and dispossession, I argue that decolonizing subjectivity is central to this process.     

中缅建交前后两国经贸关系述论

1945-1953年,中缅经贸规模和数量都较为有限。然而,由于中国推动双边关系方面的努力、“金三角”问题和大米贸易的杠杆作用,使两国经贸关系在1954年取得突破性的发展。中缅建交初期,在两国经贸发展中政治因素多于经济成分的这种模式,至少一直持续到20世纪80年代中后期缅甸放弃“缅甸式社会主义”,实行改革开放以后。     

Militarization in Burma's ethnic states: causes and consequences

Despite a dramatic reduction in fighting in Burma's ethnic states, militarization has increased as the regime seeks to extend its sovereignty and capitalize on economic opportunities. Rather than ensuring civilians' safety, militarization has exposed more civilians to human security threats, with serious consequences for families and communities. Abuses are likely to continue as long as the regime under-finances its army, disregards disciplinary problems, and receives diplomatic cover from its foreign economic partners. While civilians have sought to manage these threats as best they can, their degree of agency is, in most cases, highly constrained, and women have been particularly affected. Nevertheless, the development of community-based organizations which make use of porous borders to expose abuses and provide assistance to distressed communities constitutes an important, if limited, development.     

缅甸华人母语认同代际差异及成因

缅甸华人母语认同代际差异表现在语言选择、语言水平、语言学习时段及途径、语言规划、对下一代的语言期望等五方面,并各具特点。其形成原因主要有:不同年龄段华裔的生存背景不同,导致母语学习需求和动机不同;家庭和学校教育在各时代发挥的母语传承作用不同,进而形成的母语认同模式不同;不同时期国家语言政策的指挥效用也不同。研究华人母语认同状况,应探求母语认同模式,充分发挥家庭教育与学校教育的配合作用;客观看待语言认同带来的民族认同新变化,利用地缘优势,为缅甸国内稳定的华文教育政策营造良好周边环境。多元文化背景下,海外华人母语与居住国通用语是可以共存并和谐发展的。     

From Cronyism to Oligarchy? Privatisation and Business Elites in Myanmar

Privatisation is often contentious yet in Myanmar it has not so much been its merits or drawbacks that have attracted attention as questions around implementation. In Myanmar, the implementation of privatisation has broad significance for the political economy. A first phase of privatisation was focused on small and medium-sized enterprises and did not have a significant economic impact. A second phase, commenced in 2008, consolidated the interests of a business elite with personal connections to the military regime. The impact of this second phase of privatisation was such that some elements of this elite strengthened to the extent that they no longer relied entirely on patronage, creating opportunities for diversification in their strategies of wealth creation and defence. For this reason, it is argued, the wealthiest strata of Myanmar’s business elite is now best conceived as not simply consisting of cronies but rather as a nascent form of oligarchy. In theoretical terms, this suggests that greater attention to the qualitative difference between cronyism and oligarchy is warranted, as is close study of processes – like privatisation and political reform – that enable or require a wider range of strategies of wealth defence.