Who Stands to Gain From Burma’s Subjection?

 

 

Below is a map of Burma/Myanmar. Let’s take a look shall we.

Those countries directly bordering Burma are India to the west and going north; China – northern and eastern borders; Laos – a bit on the middle eastern border; and, Thailand, easterly and southerly. Then due south – the waters of the Indian Ocean.

Though the capital is Yangon (Rangoon – on the southern coast), the junta built a new city, Naypyidaw (Pyinmana) for their administrative ‘offices’ and the like, kind of midway between Yangon and Mandalay. (Naypyidaw is closer to Mandalay than Yangon). I was looking for it on Google and until I put in the specific name – Naypyidaw – it wasn’t showing up on the map. Everything else was of course.

Do you know what the single – largest – export is for Burma?

Natural gas. $2.8 BILLION

Benefactors:

• Thailand = 20% of all electricity comes from Burma/Myanmar.
• China
• India
• Singapore
• Malaysia

There are, of course, other resources: oil, natural resources – nickel, copper, and coal to gems like rubies and jade, timber. According to Der Speigel,

Beijing’s state-owned energy groups plan to exploit oil and gas fields off the Burmese coast and have already signed agreements with the junta.

Another project in the works calls for the construction of 2,380 kilometers (1,480 miles) of oil and gas pipelines from Burma’s western Rakhine State all the way to Kunming, the capital of China’s southern Yunnan Province.

So by far, the most current and certainly the greatest benefactor is China.

This is the result of sanctions from ‘the West’ following the 1988 protests, the resultant crackdown by the military junta, and the massacre of thousands of Burmese.

Who filled the gap, the void left by ‘the West?’

China. Burma’s immediate neighbor.

From Earthrights International comes these astonishing revelations:

More than a million immigrants from throughout the People’s Republic have already settled, more or less legally, in Burma.

China mines nickel, copper and coal in Burma.

14 Chinese companies are building hydroelectric power plants.

The trade between the two nations approached $1.5 billion last year.

The Chines yuan is treated as legal tender, and it is believed that approximately one-third (1/3) of the population of Mandalay is Chinese.

But the most brutish of all Chinese imports: Weapons, and the other military materials the junta uses to subjugate their people, in the form of helicopters, aircraft, artillery guns, warships, and tanks from their northern neighbor. Warships? Burma has a navy!? Oh yeah. It’s thought that Burma has spent around $2 billion worth of military hardware from China – alone. (Chile has been reported as selling weapons to Burma’s junta. That’s of interest since the widow & children of Chile’s former president for life, Augusto Pinochet, were arrested today.)

I think China will realize quickly just how much of a problem this will be for them. China’s own track record of human rights violations and the suppressing of their own people, coupled with Chinese support and sanctioning of yet another “inhumane regime” whose very actions rival that of the Chinese will not go unnoticed. One of the greatest of economical endeavors for China – the upcoming Olympics – isn’t far away, 2008 – just around the corner.

The mission of Olympic Watch is to monitor the human rights situation in the People’s Republic of China in the run-up to the 2008 Olympic Games and to campaign to achieve positive change in the lives of the people of China.