Sacred politics of Chinese infrastructure

Christians, Buddha's tooth, dragons, and conflict at Myitsone, Kachin, Burma

Bibliographic Data

ID3642224
AuthorsLaur Kiik (0000-0003-2552-8971, The University of Tokyo, corresponding author)
Year2024
Volume58
Issue5
Pages1379-1406
Publication date2024-09-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueModern Asian Studies (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0026-749X • E-ISSN: 1469-8099
PublisherCambridge University Press (CUP) (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.1017/s0026749x23000501
OpenAlexW4411151791
LanguageEN
Citations received3
References cited11

How do 'communist' Chinese state companies handle sacredness and religions? What role do religions and sacredness play in infrastructural conflicts? Debates on Chinese investment and the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) often highlight the failure of China's largest-ever hydropower project overseas-the Myitsone Dam, located in war-torn Buddhist Burma (Myanmar) in an ethnic Kachin Christian area. Public outcry against this mega-development led the Burmese regime to halt construction in 2011, shocking Beijing and causing an international scandal. This article explores this infrastructural conflict's religious, sacred, and more-than-human dimensions. Based on interviews, Chinese media analysis, and ethnographic fieldwork among Kachin people since 2010, the article focuses on the project site-the famous Myitsone confluence, birthplace of the Irrawaddy River. There, local village church leaders helped lead and shelter the very earliest anti-dam resistance, despite military state repression. There also, Chinese state-owned companies encountered Catholicism, Baptism, Theravada Buddhism, and indigenous animist worlds, and described these foreign, rural religious worlds for China's domestic audiences. Kachin dragon-kin deities, anti-dam activists, and the more-than-human charms of the local natural landscape helped create a sacredness, which the Chinese dam developers could not easily disprove. Throughout, sacred politics shaped this international infrastructure conflict

Ancient history · Archaeology · Buddhism · Gautama Buddha · Geography · Political science · Politics · Asian Geopolitics and Ethnography · Global Peace and Security Dynamics · History · Law · Southeast Asian Sociopolitical Studies

Tools

Open DOIOpen Access