Sacred politics of Chinese infrastructure: Christians, Buddha’s tooth, dragons, and conflict at Myitsone, Kachin, Burma (Record no. 531018)
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| fixed length control field | 02299nam a22001457a 4500 |
| 008 - FIXED-LENGTH DATA ELEMENTS--GENERAL INFORMATION | |
| fixed length control field | 250723b ||||| |||| 00| 0 eng d |
| 100 ## - MAIN ENTRY--PERSONAL NAME | |
| Personal name | Kiik, Laur |
| 245 ## - TITLE STATEMENT | |
| Title | Sacred politics of Chinese infrastructure: Christians, Buddha’s tooth, dragons, and conflict at Myitsone, Kachin, Burma |
| 260 ## - PUBLICATION, DISTRIBUTION, ETC. (IMPRINT) | |
| Place of publication, distribution, etc | Modern Asian Studies |
| 300 ## - PHYSICAL DESCRIPTION | |
| Extent | 58(5), Sep, 2024: p.1379-1406 |
| 520 ## - SUMMARY, ETC. | |
| Summary, etc | How do ‘communist’ Chinese state companies handle sacredness and religions? What role do religions and sacredness play in infrastructural conflicts? Debates on Chinese investment and the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) often highlight the failure of China’s largest-ever hydropower project overseas—the Myitsone Dam, located in war-torn Buddhist Burma (Myanmar) in an ethnic Kachin Christian area. Public outcry against this mega-development led the Burmese regime to halt construction in 2011, shocking Beijing and causing an international scandal. This article explores this infrastructural conflict’s religious, sacred, and more-than-human dimensions. Based on interviews, Chinese media analysis, and ethnographic fieldwork among Kachin people since 2010, the article focuses on the project site—the famous Myitsone confluence, birthplace of the Irrawaddy River. There, local village church leaders helped lead and shelter the very earliest anti-dam resistance, despite military state repression. There also, Chinese state-owned companies encountered Catholicism, Baptism, Theravada Buddhism, and indigenous animist worlds, and described these foreign, rural religious worlds for China’s domestic audiences. Kachin dragon-kin deities, anti-dam activists, and the more-than-human charms of the local natural landscape helped create a sacredness, which the Chinese dam developers could not easily disprove. Throughout, sacred politics shaped this international infrastructure conflict.- Reproduced https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/modern-asian-studies/article/sacred-politics-of-chinese-infrastructure-christians-buddhas-tooth-dragons-and-conflict-at-myitsone-kachin-burma/B300AC51678D2C8C01A0851A05FDC607 |
| 650 ## - SUBJECT ADDED ENTRY--TOPICAL TERM | |
| Topical term or geographic name as entry element | Belt and road initiative, Religious diversity, Rural resistance, Sacred sites, Hydropower politics. |
| 9 (RLIN) | 55610 |
| 773 ## - HOST ITEM ENTRY | |
| Main entry heading | Modern Asian Studies |
| 942 ## - ADDED ENTRY ELEMENTS (KOHA) | |
| Item type | Articles |
| Withdrawn status | Lost status | Source of classification or shelving scheme | Damaged status | Not for loan | Permanent location | Current location | Date acquired | Serial Enumeration / chronology | Barcode | Date last seen | Koha item type |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Indian Institute of Public Administration | Indian Institute of Public Administration | 2025-07-23 | 58(5), Sep, 2024: p.1379-1406 | AR136773 | 2025-07-23 | Articles |