ABSTRACT
This chapter critically looks at the contestations that China's resource extraction projects are producing in Myanmar's borderlands, locating these at the intersection between China's domestic developmental drivers and Myanmar's state-building agenda of enclosing its multi-ethnic, resource-rich frontiers. These faultlines are flattening out socio-ecological landscapes, where groups have fought at multiple fronts – against the state, against ‘outsiders’ and frequently against one another. The chapter argues for rescaling the capital-ecology question by looking at how subnational actors in the China–Myanmar borderlands are reshaping the discourse on resources and rights from below in far-reaching ways. It maps this evolving heterogeneous subnational policy space of diverse actors and competing agendas in Myanmar, which is producing new forms of conflict while exacerbating old ones. This holds out the promise of forging new transnational advocacy networks while at the same time testing subnational solidarities in the process.
