Shrinking PLANET

Chinese spread into Myanmar pushes out some Burmese culture

MANDALAY, Myanmar – Myanmar’s last royal capital harbored the most learned Buddhist monks and exquisite artists, citizens speaking the most refined Burmese and cooks who prepared the best curries in the land. Mandalay was rhapsodized as the nation’s cultural core.

Today, along the grand moat of the former royal palace, Chinese music rings out as people perform tai chi exercises, a sign of an uneasy transformation taking place in Myanmar’s secondlargest city. This once quintessential Burmese metropolis, residents say, is losing its traditions as a massive influx of Chinese migrants reshapes it in their own likeness.

“I feel that I am no longer a resident of Mandalay,” says Nyi Nyi Zaw, a 30-yearold journalist, adding that problems between Burmese and Chinese caused by the changing dynamics have become a staple of his reporting. “(Chinese people) look like the residents. They have money, so they have the power.”

This makeover of Mandalay – about 185 miles from China’s Yunnan province and at the crossroads of trade, transport and smuggling routes – reflects a Chinese footprint across Southeast Asia that has grown alongside Beijing’s economic and military clout. And it is one that is expected to widen as China pushes forward with its One Belt, One Road initiative to link Eurasian nations via land and sea routes.

Propelled by Beijing’s policy of encouraging Chinese enterprises to expand abroad as well as official Chinese government investment in its neighbors’ infrastructure, the influx has sparked a measure of prosperity in some impoverished Southeast Asian regions. But along with it has come local resentment, sometimes anger, at perceived Chinese aggressiveness, cultural insensitivity and environmental damage.

Chinese have been drawn to Southeast Asia for centuries, with waves of migrants fleeing war, revolution and starvation in the first half of the 20th century. While most of them came with little more than the shirts on their backs, many of the latest migrants are arriving with cash and savvy.

“Out of the 10 top entrepreneurs in Mandalay, seven are Chinese,” says Win Htay, vice president of the Mandalay Region Chamber of Commerce and Industry. He says Chinese in the city own everything from small noodle shops to expensive commercial buildings.

He estimates some 60 percent of Mandalay’s economy, including the key industries, is now in Chinese hands.

Next to Laos’ capital, Vientiane, Chinese are building a virtually new city on more than 741 acres of government-provided land that is expected to cater to an influx of migrants coming to work on Chinese-backed infrastructure projects reshaping the once sleepy town on the banks of the Mekong River.

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DENIS D. GRAY/AP A woman does morning exercises and pays reverence near the former royal palace in Mandalay. Residents of Myanmar’s former royal capital are lamenting an influx of Chinese migrants. Many Chinese each early morning come to the moat to do their...

PHOTOS BY DENIS D. GRAY/AP A Chinese worker in a temple fashions a coffin. Chinese funerals, weddings and other ceremonies are held in the extensive temple compound. They say Mandalay, once regarded as the nationâs cultural core, is losing its traditions and character.