YANGON, Burma—After Burma’s military yielded to a civilian government in 2010, foreign investors rushed to set up factories and raze old neighborhoods to build luxury housing estates. Five years on, the country also known as Myanmar has only a precarious foothold in the global economy.
The government has loosened curbs on the media and political dissent. Many people have access to the Internet and cellphones for the first time. New hotels and shopping malls stand like beacons among the ruined colonial mansions and crumbling socialist era apartments of Yangon (formerly Rangoon), the biggest city.
Elections in November will provide a key test of whether Burma’s generals are relinquishing power as promised. The ruling Union Solidarity and Development Party, allied with the country’s former military rulers, can point to economic growth of over 8.5 percent, and foreign direct investment topping $8 billion this year, as evidence its reforms are making progress.
But more than a third of Burma’s 51.4 million people still live on less than $1.25 a day. Their reality is rural poverty or urban slums dominated by gangs, factories paying workers barely enough to get by, and a near absence of public services.
