In Japan’s Myanmar policy-making, there was a significant transition from relatively coherent policy-making to a more fragmented organizational process in the late 1970s. Until then, decisions on critical issues regarding Myanmar, namely war reparation negotiations in 1954, war reparation renegotiations in 1963, and ODA expansion in the late 1970s seemed to have been taken within a domestic policy-making system involving influencial politicians. On the other hand, the management of expanding ODA, which was the major part of Japan’s Myanmar policy after the late 1970s, was dealt with by domestic bureaucratic coordination under the overall policy direction of a quantitative expansion of ODA. It is likely that this was due to the characteristics of these policy issues and the fragmented nature of Japan’s foreign and ODA policy-making, which became more apparent around this period. Once Japan’s ODA provision became an issue to be dealt with organizationally, Japan’s ODA was not adequately checked nor assessed from the perspective of effectiveness in achieving its
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In accordance with the rapid expansion of the ODA budget after the late 1970s, Japan’s foreign aid policy-making became an organizational process to adjust the ODA budget allocation among recipient countries. This process presumably involved the rent-seeking activities of politicians and private companies committed to ODA projects. By examining Japan’s aid to Myanmar, Seekins calls such a transition in Japan’s policy-making as a ‘kokunaika’ (domesticization) process, which is operated “on the basis of closed, though not necessarily unbreachable circles of individuals and groups who confer favors upon each other within the framework of long-term, reciprocal relationships” (Seekins, 1992: 247). As a result, Japan’s foreign aid policy-making became a business-as-usual process rather than a strict assessment process of policy objectives and efficacy except in the cases of scandals and other external changes.50
Since deciding upon a quantitative expansion of economic assistance in the late 1970s until Myanmar’s serious economic downturn became apparent in the late 1980s, there did not seem to be any domestic actor that had the incentive to conduct a serious
49
Still, the impact of Japan’s war reparations and economic assistance seem to be mixed. For example, the Baluchaung hydro power plant, the most symbolic project of Japan’s war reparations completed in March 1960, has provided a significant portion of electricity to central Myanmar, including Yangon, for nearly half a century. The plant was built in Karenni (Kayah) State, a remote jungle area with frequent insurgency activities, using around 17 percent of total war reparations between 1955 and 1963, together with Nippon KJei and Kajima as major participants from Japan (Seekins, 2007: 59-60; Arase, 1995: 30; Rix, 1980: 201-202). On the other hand, the so-called ‘Four Industrialization Projects’ (Yon-dai K8gy8ka Purojekuto) have earned a poor reputation (Steinberg, 2001: 255; Kudo, 1997a). A war reparation project that began in 1962 aimed to support the construction of assembly plants for four selected industries including light and heavy vehicles, agricultural machinery and electric goods. In contrast to the initial project objectives, those industries never became self-sustaining, and as a result four Japanese companies, namely Hino for truck assembly, Mazda for automobiles, jeeps and vans, Kubota for farm machinery and Matsushita for electrical appliances, continued to supply components until the end of the project in the late 1980s (Seekins, 2007: 60-61). As a whole, the Ne Win regime did not pay much attention to the implementation and evaluation of economic assistance once such aid projects were committed (Seekins, 2007: 73-74). Also, there was almost no monitoring of foreign aid projects in Myanmar as it had been extremely difficult for intellectuals, journalists and other private actors to raise any voice against the government (Seekins, 2007: 73).
50
Japan’s normalization of ties with the PRC in 1978, for example, became an opportunity to start extending ODA to the PRC.
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assessment and evaluation of Japan’s aid policy. MOFA recognized international structural pressures and advocated the necessity to expand the quantity of ODA to Myanmar in response to such pressures. METI never had any strong motivation to oppose Japan’s ODA disbursement to Myanmar as its own ODA projects could be understood as not only a prior investment for Japan’s access to Myanmar’s potential market, but also a means to create foreign demand for Japanese companies’ products, even if this did not result in any synergetic effects. It was in the late 1980s that MOF finally took Myanmar’s accumulated debt problem seriously, which resulted in the ODA budget to Myanmar reaching its peak at this time. Such policy-making was mostly carried out as a routine process within an administrative framework (Orr, 1990: 12). This situation can be described as one of ‘inertia’, in which no actor took any actions to strictly assess projects or review policy with regard to economic assistance to Myanmar.
Several features of Japanese foreign aid in combination with factors on the Myanmar side ensured that Japan provided continuous economic assistance to Myanmar. First of all, the Japanese government operates ‘y8sei-shugi’ or a request-based system in providing ODA, selecting its aid projects from a request list submitted by a recipient country. This has been officially explained as a system to encourage a recipient country’s sense of ownership of a project and to encourage self-help efforts; whereas, in fact such project requests were in many cases proposed by Japanese consultant companies in coordination with the recipient country’s government (Orr, 1990: 60). This system was, to some extent, a product of Japan’s insufficient institutional capacity for ODA implementation. As the Japanese government expanded its ODA budget too rapidly without building up the necessary human resources for project implementation, Japan’s ODA projects could not help but depend heavily on private companies (Orr, 1990: 28-29). Such insufficient institutional capacity, in combination with the primacy of quantitative targets for ODA provision meant that any project evaluation systems were left largely undeveloped. Japan’s economic assistance to Myanmar was a typical
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case of rapid quantitative expansion without having an adequate assessment and feedback mechanism within Japan’s ODA implementation system (Kudo, 1997a).
8.
Conclusion
Japan’s Myanmar policy before 1988 has often been explained by Myanmar studies scholars from two perspectives: that of ‘special interests’ and a ‘special relationship’. The ‘special interests’ argument points out that Japan’s economic assistance to Myanmar was motivated by special interests related to aid projects at the micro level. The Mainichi Shimbun, for example, indicated the possible existence of Japan’s domestic political-business interests, which could have led to exceptional features of the ‘Four Industrialization Projects’ (Mainichi Shimbun Shakaibu ODA Shuzaihan, 1990: 8-22). By utilizing the concept of a ‘boomerang economy’, Seekins hypothetically illustrated the inflation mechanism of the scale of ODA projects which was caused by participants’ interest in maximizing profits within a policy-making system that had no effective monitoring function to improve the quality of economic assistance (Seekins, 2007: 71-74).
Despite the loose assessment mechanism for aid projects and possible existence of some special interests in economic assistance, however, such interests do not seem to have had much impact on the balance of ODA budgetary allocation among recipient countries. Japan’s ODA provision to Myanmar between 1983 and 1987 was US$779 million. This was far less than that for the PRC (US$2,177 million), Indonesia (US$1,433 million), the Philippines (US$1,364 million), Thailand (US$1,307 million) and Bangladesh (US$932 million); and almost at the same level as Malaysia (US$777 million) and India (US$704), followed by Pakistan (US$511 million) and Sri Lanka
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(US$466).51 Although various interpretations for this data are possible, the amount for Myanmar is moderate if Myanmar is regarded as a less-developed Southeast Asian country outside ASEAN. More precisely, special interests might have had some impact on the formulation, selection or continuation of certain ODA projects, but this only became possible under political pressure to spend the expanded ODA budget and only within the balance of budgetary allocation formed by administrative coordination.
The ‘special relationship’ argument in terms of bilateral personal and emotional ties between Japan and Myanmar has also been raised as a major reason for Japan’s economic assistance (Steinberg, 1993: 139). In addition to the pro-Myanmar politicians and NGOs mentioned above, there are certainly many Japanese, the so-called ‘biru-kichi’ (Biruma kichigai, crazy about Burma), who have a strong emotional attachment to Myanmar after visiting as diplomats, technical advisors and so on (Seekins, 1999b). Rix identifies the Japan-Myanmar relationship as a special relationship using the example of Japan’s first untied loan for oil exploration appraisal in Myanmar in 1971 (Rix, 1980: 235). Steinberg also describes the emotional bilateral ties between Japan and Myanmar in the following way:
The Japanese retained a sentimental attachment to Burma after the war, partly because of the trauma and a certain amount of guilt over the era, partly perhaps because of the attraction of Burmese Buddhism, and partly because at certain levels there was real affection between the Burmese and the Japanese (Steinberg, 2001: 254).
Nemoto puts even more stress on the bilateral ‘special relationship’ as Japan’s “non-rational” motivation for its “extraordinary amounts of aid” (Nemoto, 2007: 100-103). Many Japanese policy-makers mentioned that the Ne Win regime had shown
51
All figures are calculated from the data of ODA net disbursement in MOFA, Diplomatic Bluebook 1988, 1987, 1986, 1985, and 1984.
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a friendly and accommodative attitude toward Japanese policy-makers, giving priority access to Myanmar’s senior leaders and repeatedly glorifying their shared history (Tanabe and Nemoto, 2003: 68-69). Whilst some policy-makers certainly had an affinity for Myanmar, nonetheless, Diet members’ bilateral friendship leagues and individual politicians also advocated ODA provision to many other countries. The Abe faction, for instance, apparently influenced economic assistance not only to Myanmar but also to South Korea and Thailand, and the Tanaka faction presumably supported aid provision to the PRC and Indonesia (Orr, 1990: 23). It can be assumed that the ‘biru-kichi’ bureaucrats did not have as much power in the domestic policy-making system in comparison to other countries’ specialists.
Moreover, as mentioned above, the actual ODA budgetary allocation to Myanmar was not necessarily excessive, at least in comparative terms. In comparing Japan’s ODA to Myanmar with that to Bangladesh, Seekins casts doubt on a shared history and personal ties as a dominant factor in Japan’s ODA policy-making (Seekins, 2007: 74-75). Still, it is possible that the discourse of a ‘special relationship’ or a ‘pro-Japanese country’ had functioned as a handy rationale for MOFA and other advocates in explaining the ODA budget to Myanmar vis-à-vis other domestic policy-makers, Diet members and public opinion, none of which had necessarily been sensitive to international structural pressures. To sum up, the ‘special relationship’ should at best be considered as a supplementary factor in explaining Japan’s foreign aid policy to Myanmar, if not just a discourse; even though the ‘special relationship’ had arguably been an essential asset for the bilateral diplomatic relationship.
In essence, Japan’s pre-1988 Myanmar policy was generally a response to international structural pressures into which the Japanese government increasingly reflected its own perceptions of Myanmar’s agendas and surrounding international structure. Despite pursuing minimal foreign policy objectives, the Japanese government
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was increasingly aware of its role as a member of the Western bloc and the only developed country in Asia. The Japanese government, hence, came to recognize the necessity of supporting the Ne Win regime in order to keep it away from the communist bloc and to show Japan’s contribution to international political stability and development vis-à-vis Asian developing countries and Western developed countries.
Even so, from the late 1970s, under the overall policy direction of ODA expansion, Japan’s foreign aid policy toward Myanmar became a matter to be dealt with through organizational processes involving some rent-seeking activities of domestic actors. In accordance with the sharp expansion of its ODA budget, Japan’s economic assistance to Myanmar was overwhelmed by the inertia of administrative coordination in foreign aid policy-making. In other words, Japan’s economic assistance to Myanmar reflected the political aim of expanding ODA and was conducted in the manner of ‘business as usual’ without any strict assessment and evaluation. This resulted in a situation in which different domestic actors assigned different meanings to economic assistance to Myanmar.
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