In Asymmetrical Neighbors, Enze Han embarks on an ambitious project: 1) to theorize how in multi-ethnic borderlands, state and national building are “interactive processes across national boundaries” (p. 4); and 2) “to offer a rich and detailed account of the modern history of state and national building in the borderland between China, Myanmar and Thailand” since the Second World War (p. 4). Han is fluent in Chinese, Burmese, Thai and English, allowing him to source documents in the original languages.
Han nearly accomplishes these goals. His account is well written and well organized. There are two shortcomings. First, for theories of state and nation building he draws only on the bellicist theory, associated with Charles Tilley (pp. 27–28), which argues that state building relies on military coercion, and that nation building is strengthened by foreign war and a “rally behind the flag effect” (p. 30). In borderlands with multiple ethnicities, Han adds a “neighborhood effect” (p. 9), where “state building in one country can be influenced by the same process in neighboring states” (p. 9). Under conditions of power asymmetry, the two possibilities are: 1) adversarial, when the stronger state meddles politically and militarily in the weaker one; and 2) amicable, when the more powerful state exerts economic influence. If state power is equal, the possibilities are: 3) a mutually militarized borderland in adversarial conditions; and 4) friendly relations, where there is no neighbourhood effect (p. 10). These conceptualizations of state building are not quite robust enough to explain Han's complicated stories involving multiple armies, international actors, regional organizations and diverse ideologies. Han fails to refer back to them in subsequent chapters, or to reprise them in the conclusion. For nation building, Han asserts that for border-straddling ethnicities, those in the stronger country may help those in the weaker country and those in the weaker country may resent their own country (p. 10). Han offers examples of ethnic groups in China helping those in Myanmar, and those in Thailand offering refuge to those from Myanmar. These conceptualizations work.
Second, Han's grasp of the China–Myanmar borderland history is greater than his understanding of the Thailand–Myanmar story. Doing a cross-border study is difficult, but it requires an equal understanding of the history, politics and cultures on both sides of the border. Han uses the terms “chao khao” or “hill tribes” without recognizing that these are pejorative terms in Thailand for upland groups, whom he describes as roaming in the hills practising slash and burn agriculture (p. 86), a disparaging lowland stereotype that doesn't reflect reality. Han mentions the Royal Projects and highland development projects as positive efforts, ignoring that these have been controversial attempts at state and nation building.
Among the book's many accomplishments, chapter three provides a history of state formation in upland Southeast Asia, including colonial history, necessary for understanding the entrenched stereotypes of ethnic minorities and the misbegotten efforts to include them in nations. In Burma, this history explains why ethnic minorities in the north and northeast continue to resist inclusion in Myanmar to this day. Chapter four details how the KMT army presence “has had tremendous implications for the processes of state building along the borders of these three countries” (p. 56), including border solidification in China, borderland fragmentation in Burma, and the formation of an irregular armed group in northern Thailand.
Chapter five covers the manoeuvring of communist groups in borderlands, including excessive PLA violence in Yunnan in the 1950s; the development of a Communist Party in Burma, with Chinese support until the late 1970s; and the formation of the Communist Party of Thailand that was violently suppressed in 1976. Han argues that, “[h]aving escaped colonial domination, Thailand's political and social structures had more continuity and durability compared with other formerly colonized countries in Southeast Asia” (p. 86). However, Siam was all but colonized by the British, who established the Royal Forestry Department to allow Britain to govern northern Thailand and extract its teak forests. British officials mapped Siam and rebuffed French forces on Siam's eastern border. As Thongchai Winichakul argues in Siam Mapped: A History of the Geo-body of a Nation (University of Hawai‘i Press, 1994), many elites in Bangkok welcomed British control and protection.
Chapter six on transboundary economic flows covers the uneven history in trade, including recent rapacious timber harvesting in northern Myanmar by China and Thailand, extractions that have wrought ecological and social devastation. The Greater Mekong Subregion (GMS) enabled much of this resource extraction. The Conclusion describes new regional organizations to control resource extraction and trade along the GMS-sponsored Asian Highway and the Mekong River. Region-making, now driven by China, has joined state building as an important dynamic to keep an eye on.
Asymmetrical Neighbors brings together detailed histories recounted nowhere else. Viewed as a historical study of the borderlands linking China, Myanmar and Thailand, the book is a major contribution.
