Myanmar at a Crossroads

By Tom Plate

BANGKOK _ In 1989 Chinese troops, on orders of the government, mowed down countless demonstrators in Tiananmen Square, Beijing.

It was a sad spectacle that China is still living down, though memory fades with every year of spectacular economic development _ and with the nation's steady prideful movement toward hosting the Olympic Games next summer.

Today, in what was formerly known as Burma, protestors, led by monks, are marching through the central streets of the capital of Myanmar in somewhat the same way. Will the soldiers shoot the monks? Will Yangon (Rangoon) in the end met the fate of Tiananmen?

Or, for that matter, will the Yangon of 2007 look like the Myanmar of 1988, when street protesters were smashed like so many toy figurines, 3,000 people dead in the streets?

Without a doubt, this junta has a voracious appetite for killing and repressing its own people. It's hard to see how some measure of bloody violence will be avoided. Myanmar is, in effect, the North Korea of Southeast Asia.

That's a fair analogy: After all, one common quality of Myanmar and North Korea is that their best friend _ and significant ally _ is China.

Logically, therefore, it may be that the only outside force that can stay the trigger-hand of the trigger-happy junta is China. Its influence over that Yangon rat's-nest of a government is not immense, but, applied properly, it could prove at the margins decisive. Without China's aid and investment, Myanmar would be nowhere, just like North Korea.

Don't get me wrong. The government of China possesses no humanitarian bleeding-heart that pines for better days for the Myanmarese people. This is not what Beijing is about. We must understand _ if we are to be realistic _ that China cares only about China, and that is that.

But China does worry about avoiding a massive mess on its border, which is what it surely faces if Myanmar implodes. At all costs, China prefers stability, at home, and on its edges.

Consider the North Korea analogy. China preaches _ and mainly practices _ a foreign policy of noninterference in the internal affairs of other states. It mainly takes this stance for two reasons. It understands that people who live in glass houses are unwise to throw stones.

It is not going to go around the world criticizing the human-rights practices of other countries when it is not exactly racking up Amnesty International good-guy brownie-points. The other reason is _ again _ that China cares about China, period.

Perhaps only two factors would drive China to bother whether the Myanmarese monks are mowed down by the Myanmarese soldiers.

It has invested heavily in Myanmar, has countless Chinese workers inside the country and draws out endless natural resources from that bountiful geography like an opium-head on his pipe. It would hurt China economically and in other ways to have to kick the Myanmar habit.

The second factor is that the world now expects more of China than before. Prior to the erection of the Six-Party Talks in 2003, for example, almost no one had predicted a significant measure of involvement by Beijing in the North Korean question.

But what happened? China not only created but hosted the six-party talks, and has a bit of recent hopeful effect to show for its troubles.

China now might wish to configure something comparable to alleviate the Myanmar crisis. Perhaps a let's-talk setup could be organized in Beijing, where the junta's generals _ assuming they don't decide to shoot or run (or both) _ can feel secure while facing the other side across the table.

Perhaps they can convince the generals inside Myanmar that negotiations with the camp of Aung San Suu Kyi are unavoidable. She or her designate(s) need to be at that table, hammering out some power-sharing arrangement for the country's future.

Make no mistake about it. The sandal-clad monks braving both the rain-forest weather and the always-imminent threat of a hellish rain of bullets are firmly camped on the side of the daughter of Myanmar's independence hero Aung San. They have been passing out commemorative pictures of her historic, sainted father as they stroll on through the streets. Aung San Suu Kyi inherits the democracy wind.

The junta is made up of mostly bad generals. But in the pile there are a few good ones, relatively speaking _ in the tradition of true patriots in military garb, rather than greedy stealing thieves hiding behind their patriotic uniforms and socking millions away abroad.

A few good generals and the Suu Kyi faction together could form a government that could move Myanmar toward representative democracy without ignoring a role for the army, a blunder that could plunge the country into chaos (see Iraq).

Only some formula of this nature is going to save Myanmar from tragedy. Yes, they may well shoot some of the monks. But if they don't, it may be China, ironically, that proves to be hand that prevents a Myanmarese Tiananmen.

UCLA Prof. Tom Plate, a veteran American journalist, is traveling in Southeast Asia

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