Oscillating Border Policy: Is It a Triumph for the Government or for the Myanmar IDPs in China?

Abstract

In recent years, several large-scale internal military conflicts in Myanmar, represented by the “8.08 Kokang Incident”, have led to an influx of Burmese into Yunnan, a border area between China and Myanmar. China’s border management has faced serious challenges, most directly reflected in a change in its border policy. China has not used enforced power to directly stop the influx of Burmese, such as building walls or barbed wire. But neither has it recognized the status of these people as refugees. China’s new border management policy is more about blurring their official status, in practice, allowing them to enter easily to the Chinese border city (Ruili) for work. But it also restricts them to the southeast coast of China in search of better income. This seemingly contradictory attitude of the Chinese government reflects the complexity of a multi-actor participation in governance in the China-Myanmar border region. Using Gramsci’s “hegemony theory” and Ho’s affinity ties theory, this paper explores how IDPs can flexibly use affinity ties networks to proactively influence the Chinese government’s new border governance policy from the bottom up by interacting with grassroots multi-actor border practices.