The analysis of the process of Myanmar's democratization reform from the perspective of the national geo-setting

After Myanmar's military took over the state power in February 2021, the democratization process came to an abrupt end, which once again aroused wide attention and discussion in related academic circles. However, most of the existing studies have analyzed the causes and prospects of Myanmar's democratization process from the perspectives of political, economic, cultural and other structural factors, or from the perspectives of the interests of soldiers and the struggles among domestic and foreign actors, lacking in comprehensive analysis on the application of intersecting fields by domestic and foreign actors from the perspective of cross-scale coupling. As geo-setting research growingly reflects three characteristics, namely cross-scale coupling, multi-actor interaction and the multi-field intersection, this paper will firstly put forward an analytical framework of democratization based on the new national geo-setting perspective. Then, taking Myanmar as an example, the paper will explore the characteristics of Myanmar's geo-setting in different periods and its multi-dimensional influence on the democratization process, and forecast the trend of its democratization process in the future. The results are as follows: (1) The national geo-setting can be considered as a situation in which domestic and foreign geo-actors interact comprehensively with political, economic and other fields from the view of cross-scale coupling, thus influencing the democratization process. (2) Since the 1980s, the geo-setting of Myanmar has evolved from internal chaos and external pressure, external pressure and internal stability to external stability and internal chaos, which drove Myanmar's democratization reform through the stages of democratic initiation, transformation, consolidation and recession successively. (3) In the future, the democratization reform is most likely to be carried out through the cooperation between the elected government and the military under the military control. The analysis of the process of democratic reform in Myanmar is not only helpful for China to understand the political changes in Myanmar so as to build a harmonious and stable China-Myanmar relation, but also can promote the academic circle to further think about the issue of "what kind of democratization process should be put forward", and also promote the theoretical and applied research on the national geo-setting in the future.