ABSTRACT
Chinese control over Myanmar's primary assets in the oil and gas and power industries results in an exploitative relationship in which Myanmar society does not benefit from its country's own natural resource wealth but rather exports it for the benefit of its larger, wealthy patron state. Chinese structural power and its manifestation as structural violence is nowhere clearer than in its relations with Myanmar. Structural violence resulting from China's structural power over the country's economic and environmental sectors further develops into structural violence over Myanmar's society. The China National Petroleum Corporation's (CNPC) work on the Shwe gas pipeline also resulted in structural violence within Myanmar's domestic environment. China is the destination of choice for human trafficking of women for labour from Myanmar. This relationship of causality between supply and demand leads to structural violence in Myanmar in terms of underdevelopment of the formal economy and in terms of localised violence associated with transnational organised crime.
