Myanmar unrest a problem for China

WASHINGTON — As I have watched the horrors unraveling daily on the streets of Burma these last two weeks, my thoughts have wandered back to my own extraordinary visit to that incredible country in 2001.

You want to know what Asia looked like half a century ago? “Come to Burma!” I thought. As I approached my first meeting with this fabled land, now officially called Myanmar but still thought of as Burma, I realized that it was as if time had stood still. It was as though Ronald Coleman might peek out from one of those British imperial corners of the country historically known as the “Golden Land.”

Driving in from the airport to Yangon (Rangoon), I was stupefied by that magnificent Buddhist shrine the Shwedagon Pagoda. More than 300 feet high and covered with gold, it towers over the city like a huge mystical being. But then you quickly face a sobering reality: More than 60,000 Burmese, out of a population estimated at 50 million, are in some sort of forced labor, and AIDS is ravishing the country so ferociously that a common saying is “You leave or you die.”

Then there is the military, which is another weird story. The army has approximately 400,000 soldiers, but only the very top level of officers enjoy the vast profits of this land rich in oil, minerals, diamonds, rubies and emeralds. The three top men are referred to elliptically in the papers only as “No. 1, No. 2 and No. 3.” They are each so suspicious, particularly of the others, that they all sleep at the same military compound downtown every night — no reason to give anyone the idea that HE really is No. 1!

Hill resort

That is, when you are not finding them at the super-luxurious hill resort they have built for the top military officers at Maymyo in the north, or in the elegant new capitol they have built at Naypyidaw.

But the odd thing is that, until the last two weeks —since the last internal explosion of rage on the part of these benighted peoples in 1990, when the beautiful Nobel Prize Peace Laureate Aung San Suu Kyi won the last elections, only to have the military take over entirely —the government has been mostly invisible. The fear and terror it evokes, believing itself the caretaker of the nation, have been so complete, it has not needed to demonstrate constant displays of power.

But now, hundreds of thousands of people have been out on the streets for days and days. The Buddhist “Sangha,” an alternative power center of 400,000 monks in orange robes, were turning their alms bowls upside down — which meant they were denying the military the sacred right to gain religious forgiveness from contributing alms to the monks.

Yet what can the world do in this tragic case? The Burmese military is overwhelmingly powerful; neighboring “Big Guy” China is so deeply involved in investments in Burma, with all its riches, that North from Mandalay, many people speak only Chinese; and the Asian organization that should act, the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), of which Burma has been a member for 10 years, has been so timid about judging any of its members in terms of repression that everyone was amazed when, this time around, the spokesmen dared to express “revulsion” at the Burmese military’s actions.

The war in Iraq, seemingly so far away but always a crucial element in any American foreign policy decision, then inserts its poisonous influence here. American actions half a world away from Rangoon/Yangon diminish its moral and physical capacity to act in Asia. President Bush immediately enacted further sanctions against the Burmese government, but the fact that Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice has missed two of the last three ASEAN annual security forums is yet another indicator of how America is losing influence in the region.

Olympic games

How, for instance, can Washington pressure China, using its pride over its much-vaunted Olympic Games in 2008, to pressure the Burmese junta when the United States is so unappetizingly involved in Iraq?

Into that vacuum has stepped China. But Burma raises problems there as well. For even while Beijing is wooing its neighbors with rare diplomatic skill, its support of the Burmese military (as well as for African dictatorships) shows its real loyalty is with the thugs of the world — the thugs who have resources, of course. This is not the picture of the “New China” that Beijing wants for the 2008 games that will further China’s role as a world power.

Finally, there are the big companies who do business in Burma, in particular the big oil company Total of France, which operates a natural gas project in Burma.

Universal Press Syndicate