Source: The Myanmar Times
While ASEAN nations squabble over which sports will be included on
the program at this year’s Southeast Asian Games, another country has
quietly asserted itself as an important player in the regional sporting
event.
China, Myanmar’s neighbour and a world sporting power, has
been involved in nearly all aspects of the preparation for the SEA
Games, from stadium construction to the planning of the elaborate
ceremonies that will mark the event’s opening and closing.
The
first discussions on receiving Chinese assistance to hold the games took
place in May 2011, when President U Thein Sein travelled to Beijing and
met Chinese President Hu Jintao, said Deputy Minister for Sport U
Thaung Htike, who is also vice president of the Myanmar Olympic
Committee.
Three visits from Chinese sports officials followed and five areas of cooperation were identified.
It
was decided that 28 Chinese coaches would spend a year in Myanmar
training athletes, paid for by the Chinese government. Additionally, 176
athletes would be sent for specialised training in China.
China
also agreed to donate training equipment, while Chinese experts were to
be dispatched to provide technical assistance for game management
systems like time keeping. Finally, theatre professionals would be sent
to offer guidance to the Ministry of Culture on the event’s opening and
closing ceremonies.
The 28 coaches, led by head coach Zhang
Jingsheng, arrived on December 28, 2012 to begin their year long stay in
country. Less than a month later, on January 12, 24 choreographers,
directors and staging experts arrived for a four-day visit.
The
technical experts are scheduled to arrive three months before the games
open on December 11. U Thaung Htike said a major task for the experts
was to introduce a timing system “that is to international standards”,
so any international records set at the games are definitive.
But even before the arrival of the coaches and experts, China had already managed to get a piece of the SEA Games action.
Engineering
and design of the massive sporting complex in Nay Pyi Taw, started
three years ago, planning was handled by a Chinese firm, information
distributed by Max Myanmar, which is building the three stadiums, shows.
As
the stadiums neared completion in December, U Khin Maung Kywe, director
of construction at Max Myanmar, said that Chinese workers were busy
finishing the roofing. The stadium that will host many of the SEA Games’
premier events, including football, athletics and the opening and
closing ceremonies, opened to much fanfare last month.
While
Chinese state-run news agency Xinhua has covered Beijing’s support for
the SEA Games extensively, Myanmar’s state-run media has barely
mentioned China’s role. This is no accident: U Thaung Htike expressed
concern that Myanmar citizens would be upset if they were aware of the
extent on Chinese involvement in what is to be Myanmar’s regional
coming-out party, just months before the country takes up its
much-coveted role as chair of ASEAN.
He said some of Myanmar’s
athletes were being trained by international coaches. Myanmar’s football
team is headed by a South Korean, while its boxers are receiving
guidance from a coach from Kazakhstan. Meanwhile, a Bulgarian is
instructing the weightlifting team.
Neither China’s role nor concerns about China’s role are new to the SEA Games. At the 25th
SEA Games in Laos in 2009, underlying negative feelings towards China
were fanned by the proposed location of the National Sports Complex,
said Simon Creak, an associate professor at Kyoto University’s Centre
for Southeast Asian Studies who has researched and written extensively
on the past two SEA Games.
“Chinese finance and developers were
enlisted to fund and construct the new National Sports Complex on the
outskirts of Vientiane, reputedly worth US$100 million. In return, the
developers were granted a concession to develop 1640 hectares of land in
the That Luang Marsh in central Vientiane – near the revered That Luang
stupa, the country’s most important Buddhist site and national symbol,”
Mr Creak said.
“This project and popular responses to it
exacerbated existing antipathies towards the growing Chinese presence –
and visibility – in Laos,” he said.
“The project was slammed by
locals – including, apparently, members of the ruling Lao People’s
Revolutionary Party, who had not been consulted – with much of the
criticism framed in anti-Chinese terms. Anonymous online critics accused
Somsavat Lengsavat, the government minister [and a senior deputy prime
minister] of ‘treason’, based on the perception that his Chinese
heritage made him unduly favourable to Chinese interests.”
Eventually the complex was moved to a less controversial location.
In
Myanmar, the SEA Games represents an opportunity for China to assert
its soft power at a time when its political, if not economic, influence
in the country appears on the wane. Sport could provide a new and
potentially low-risk avenue for the Chinese government and Chinese firms
to expand engagement with Nay Pyi Taw.
China has also been on
the receiving end of this kind of diplomatic maneuvering. Eighteen years
before it hosted the 2008 Olympics, Beijing hosted the Asian Games.
It
was a little more than a year after the Tiananmen Square protests and
the fallout from the massacre left China with few friends willing to
assist in them to organise what, at that time, was the largest
international sporting event China had hosted.
“According to
diplomatic sources, many multinational corporations still active in
China have withdrawn their support for the games since last year's
crackdown, which left several hundred people dead. These sources said
that international outrage over the crackdown has all but eliminated
China's hopes of persuading the International Olympic Committee to hold
the Summer Olympics of 2000 in Beijing,” Mark Fineman reported in The
Los Angeles Times in January 1990.
Breaking with the
international community, South Korea, the host of the 1986 Asian Games
and 1988 Olympics, stepped forward to lend its expertise to China,
despite the two countries not having formal diplomatic ties. Two years
later, in August of 1992, the once bitter foes normalised relations.
But
Myanmar and China already have strong ties and there is some skepticism
over Chinese intentions in providing assistance, and potential strings
that may be attached to the support.
“There are some countries
that have assisted Myanmar and they never expect anything. But I believe
this Chinese assistance for the SEA Games was the kind of a give and
take with the expectation of returns from Myanmar, rather than a pure
goodwill,” said U Khine Maung Yi, the Pyithu Hluttaw representative for
Ahlone and a member of the Pyithu Hluttaw Sport, Culture, Literature and
Art and People Relations Committee.
“They [China] try to enter Myanmar through any means … but they usually just see business opportunities.”
