China's Burma colony

Ralph Peters:

AS the junta's misbehavior worsened in Myanmar (as those thugs have re-chris tened Burma) last week, pundits suggested that we should force China to pressure its client to treat the pro-democracy demonstrators politely - by threatening to boycott next year's Beijing Olympics.

Sorry, but Myanmar's far more important to China's vision for the coming decades than the Pollution-and-Oppression Games. The bullies in Beijing see the Olympics as a coming-out party - but Myanmar is a strategic lifeline.

So, sure, if the Myanmar situation worsens as China stonewalls, we can and should punish Beijing by boycotting the 2008 Games. But we have to have realistic expectations regarding the results.

On the flip side, some Westerners argue that China isn't really the decisive player in Myanmar - that Western corporations flying under the radar screen do more to prop up the junta than Beijing does.

Absolute bull. This doesn't mean that greedy multinationals don't lurk out in those jungles - but to ascribe more power to them than to Beijing is like blaming purse-snatchers for the junk-mortgage crisis.

Here's the real situation:

China regards Myanmar as a satellite. Beijing wishes it could just grab the country the way it seized Tibet, but believes the geostrategic cost would be too high. So it supports the junta as the next-best option and develops Myanmar as an economic colony.

...

The answers are straightforward:

* Myanmar offers 1,200 miles of coastline on the Bay of Bengal and Andaman Sea, bordering the Indian Ocean. And those waters are a strategic lifeline for China, carrying trade westward and bringing back desperately needed oil from the Middle East and Africa.

China knows that we own the Pacific militarily, but hopes that - in the event of a Sino-U.S. crisis - it could face us down in the Indian Ocean, its backdoor to the world. When I was in Myanmar 11 years ago, the Chinese were already modernizing docks and eyeing the development of new harbors.

* Myanmar offers the promise of its own oil and gas deposits, while its magnificent hardwood forests are being clear-cut to feed China's industrial appetites. (The ecological devastation is stunning.) And Beijing sets the terms of trade.

* The advent of a pro-Western government in Myanmar would mean that, in wartime, China would have no direct access to the Greater Indian Ocean. The equivalent would be for the United States to lose access to the Caribbean - or worse.

China wants to minimize the ugly headlines from Myanmar, but it's not going to pull its support for the junta just to keep the U.S. water-polo team in the Olympics.

...

When I was in Myanmar in 1996 (on a counterdrug mission), the locals could no longer afford property in downtown Mandalay - a city central to the country's heritage - because the Chinese had run up real-estate prices astronomically. Up north, the old Burma road, built with American blood in World War II, was crumbling under the convoys of Chinese trucks carrying goods to Myanmar's ports.

Major cities in western China looked to Myanmar for markets, resources and export routes. And the Chinese already had established intelligence listening posts on the Myanmar coast back then. Security cooperation was quiet, but close.

...

In another country evil triumphs because of evils support from China. China has become a force for evil in its neo colonial search for commerce and resources. It is actively amoral. From Burma to Zimbabwe with Iran in between China sustains evil regimes. Burma is mainly a threat to itself so it will not get the kind of attention that Iran gets and deserves. Its hour on the stage is already passing until the next upheaval.

As for boycotting the Olympics, that is right up their with the Animal House solutions to problems where obviously futile gestures are pursued.

Christopher Hitchens also has thoughts on China's role in Burma.