Security and Environment Concern of Energy Cooperation Between China and Myanmar

Part of China's energy security strategy is to use Myanmar's territory as an energy transportation route and transit area by actively implementing energy cooperation to build an oil and gas pipeline to transport oil from Myanmar to China. Aside from the fact that this project is hugely beneficial economically for Myanmar and China, there are also concerns involved. China's solution raises other problems, and not everything has gone according to plan. Thus, the purpose of this study is to examine the concerns about oil and gas pipeline cooperation between China and Myanmar by applying the energy security approach. The main argument of this research is that behind the great benefits of China and Myanmar's energy cooperation, there is a kind of "energy curse", that refers to numerous energy security concerns that will be applied in two ways: 1) the traditional security approach will be used to describe the security concerns, and 2) the non-traditional security approach will be used to explain the environmental concerns. This study concludes that the project should have ensured energy security and increased regional influence, but as Chinese companies in Myanmar tend to work only with the government, they lack an understanding of social change and public demands and fail to predict political and security trends. The concerns occur in the security sector, which is the most serious and vulnerable. This pipeline route is extremely dangerous since it runs across territory controlled by extremist ethnic groups. Meanwhile, the cooperation causes substantial environmental damage and contamination of land, water, and air. Pipeline leaks, emissions, and other damage can harm flora and nearby species and increase local pollution.