In the name of Asian solidarity: Sino–Japanese competition for technology diplomacy in Burma, 1955–1965

Abstract

A decade after the 1955 Bandung Conference, China and Japan engaged in a competition for technological exports to Burma. 1 During this process, technocrats in Beijing and Tokyo mobilized non-governmental collaborators—local Chinese industrialists and Japanese businesses seeking overseas expansion—as proxies to maximize their technological output to Burma. The Burmese, on the other hand, used the competition between Beijing and Tokyo as a bargaining tool, and pressed the two regional powers to provide at Rangoon's request. The technical aid Burma received was also affected by its shifting visions for development. Factionalist struggles between 1958 and 1962 changed not only Burma's political landscape but also its leadership's mind-set regarding the economy: the nation moved away from aid-driven industrial modernization towards a self-reliant, agricultural economy based on limited foreign technologies. Consequently, the meaning of the term ‘technological aid’, though used throughout the decade, became flexible and indistinct, carrying vastly different connotations at different stages of the Burmese state-building process. In this way, Burma's experience as an aid-receiving country in Cold War Asia may speak to the flexible power dynamics between the aiding and the aided countries, and shed light on the diversified means through which states employed science and technology as diplomatic tools in Cold War competition.