The Economist (September 9, 2010) published a critical piece about China’s relationship with Myanmar: Welcome, Neighbor – China hosts another tinpot dictator from next door.
“Tinpot dictator” are the two key words in the title of this opinion piece, as if the United States or the UK has never hosted and/or supported “tinpot” dictators.
A well-written criticism of the U.S. government from Sri Lanka sets the record straight.
“I wish the spokesman of the (U.S.) State Department … would explain how Washington’s concern for democracy in Sri Lanka squares with US support for repressive regimes such as the one in Uzbekistan or the autocratic rule in Saudi Arabia, both countries in which the U.S. has military facilities.
“In post-World War II period, Washington has militarily propped up such dictators including several in South Korea, Ferdinand Marcos who was ousted by the Filipino people, Indonesia’s Suharto also thrown out by the people, Vietnam’s Dinh Diem, various military governments in Thailand, Singapore’s autocrat Lee Kwan Yew, the military dictators in Pakistan from Ayub Khan to Pervez Musharraf, all of them from our part of the world…” The Ugly Americans Once More (Lankaweb, Sri Lanaka’s first Social Media website)
The Economist only mentions a half century of history between China and Burma/Myanmar, yet, China’s history with Burma and then Myanmar goes back about two thousand years.
The opinion piece also does not mention that China, since 1982, has not been into nation building as the U.S. has since 9/11, when President G.W. Bush launched wars against Iraq and Afghanistan with threats to Iran and North Korea.
Continued on November 12, 2014 with Part 2
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Lloyd Lofthouse is the award-winning author of My Splendid Concubine [3rd edition]. When you love a Chinese woman, you marry her family and culture too. This is the love story Sir Robert Hart did not want the world to discover.
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I have a few hits from Myanmar in my stats and I looked it up. Burma, I thought, and sure enough, it used to be. I must have missed the name-change but the world map has been changing faster than I can keep track of it.
Most people still assume that China is as it always was … but it has never been a stationary target. No nation is, if it intends to survive. China has been different with each emperor, each dynasty, each conquest, battle, loss, change in Asia and the world. And it continues. If we are a nation long enough, so will we.
True, but the US has already changed: converting from a Republic to a Democracy; women getting the right to vote; ending slavery; the child labor laws, etc. Change was built into the Constitution by the Founding Fathers even though some on the far right would like to keep everything like it was when there was slavery, women were chattel and we burned witches.
And now the U.S. seems to be undergoing another change that could covert the democracy to an corporate controlled oligarchy.
“Corporate controlled oligarchy” … another way of saying fascism via corporations?
Fascism is making a comeback in the West and that includes the US.