Mon, Dec 31, 2001 page1

• For many people in Myanmar, China is an unwanted ally

  • NY TIMES NEWS SERVICE
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  Each morning, in the Buddhist heartland of the country once known as Burma, dozens of monks clamber onto ramshackle buses and leave the stately, sprawling city of Mandalay.

  The monks, their black-lacquer begging bowls swinging from their shoulders, head for a handful of dusty new settlements that ring Mandalay. Once there, they hop off the buses and begin the ancient practice of begging for food.

  This peculiar reverse commute is dictated by shifting demographics: The Burmese who can be relied on to give food to the monks have been largely forced out of the center of Mandalay by rampant development.

  Most of the building has been financed by developers from southwestern China. Garish concrete-and-glass hotels, shopping malls and houses surround the crenelated red-brick walls of the Mandalay Fort, which protected Burma's royal palace until it fell to British troops in 1885.

  Thousands of Chinese merchants and traders have streamed into Mandalay since the late 1980s. New to Myanmar and numb to its religious traditions, they brush off the begging monks.

  "The Chinese live in lavish houses," said one prominent dissident. "They make us feel like second-class citizens in our own town. That's why we dislike them."

  China's brash presence in this former capital is only the most visible facet of the complex relationship between Myanmar and its hulking northern neighbor. While ethnic Chinese were historically less influential here than in Thailand or Vietnam, China has assumed a disproportionate role in postcolonial times because Myanmar has taken a course radically different from that of its neighbors.

  Shunned by the West -- first through its own choice as it experimented with socialism and later for its remorseless crackdown on the democracy movement -- this isolated and impoverished country has turned to Beijing for military aid.

  In recent years, the relationship has turned commercial. Myanmar is now the largest trading partner of Yunnan Province, just across its northern border. While China ranks only 15th in foreign direct investment in Myanmar, its leaders are eager to do more business.

  Chinese President Jiang Zemin (江澤民) visited Myanmar earlier this month, signing agreements to increase investment and to cooperate on agriculture and oil production. It was the first visit by a Chinese leader since the military junta crushed a democracy movement led by Aung San Suu Kyi in 1988.

  Jiang gazed at treasures like the Shwedagon Pagoda in Yangon, the capital, and the Buddhist temples in Bagan. He also gave a rosy endorsement to the reviled junta, declaring that Myanmar "must be allowed to choose its own development path suited to its own conditions."

  In Mandalay, city bosses welcomed Jiang with a red-and-white banner stretched across the main highway. On the streets, however, feelings toward the Chinese leader were no warmer than toward the Chinese developers.

  "Of course, the government rounded up people to cheer," said a local tour guide. "But nobody else paid attention."Even Myanmar's generals are said to be ambivalent about their close ties to Beijing. Analysts say the tanks, warships and other military equipment that China sells to Myanmar tend to be shoddy and unreliable.

  Nor can older leaders of the junta forget that China's government supported a Communist insurgency against the government here for decades. Beijing abandoned that policy in the late 1970s -- simultaneously opening its economy and cultivating ties with neighboring countries.

  By 1990, Myanmar could not afford to resist China's importunings. The West had condemned it for ignoring the results of an election that gave overwhelming victory to Suu Kyi's National League for Democracy. She was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1991 but has spent seven of the last 11 years under house arrest.

  Early this month, several fellow Nobel laureates, meeting in Oslo, Norway, issued a fresh call for the release of Suu Kyi, known in Myanmar as "the lady." More US companies are severing ties to Myanmar, while those that keep them are coming under sustained pressure from Myanmar activist groups.

  "The isolation of Burma by the West has driven it into the arms of China," said Ma Thanegi, a former democracy activist and now a journalist.

  "The government knows it, and they do not like it."

  As memories of the 1988 crackdown fade, however, Myanmar is finding it easier to forge ties with other countries -- particularly for buying arms. Russia recently sold 10 MIG-29 fighter jets to Yangon, while diplomats say the Russian government is helping to build a nuclear power plant in central Myanmar.

  Yet because of history and geography, China is likely to remain Myanmar's indispensable ally for the foreseeable future. Experts say the Chinese government is more determined than ever to strengthen ties because it views Myanmar as its economic gateway to Southeast Asia.

  "If you develop the infrastructure, the distance from Yunnan through Burma to the sea is much smaller than putting goods on a train and transporting them all the width of China to Shanghai," said Robert Karniol, Jane's Defence Weekly's Asia-Pacific editor, who is based in Bangkok.

  China has already built a road connecting a border town in Yunnan with a port on the Irrawaddy River, north of Yangon. It has given dredges to Myanmar to make the river navigable for deeper cargo ships.

  The effect of China's investments on ordinary Burmese is harder to judge. Thanks largely to the Chinese, Mandalay has become a boomtown, with flashy shopping malls, traffic jams and a stubborn drug problem.

  But those changes have done nothing to ease the fear and alienation that come with life under a military dictatorship. In Mandalay, as elsewhere, the universities have been padlocked to prevent unrest. Satellite campuses, with drab cinder-block buildings, have been erected outside town.

  The Chinese are viewed by the many who loathe the government as complicit in its acts of repression. People here say Chinese developers have paid off local officials to give them access to prime real estate. They point to the baronial houses of these officials as evidence of the corruption.

  Indeed, the rise of the Chinese in Myanmar -- and their cozy alliance with the junta leaders -- has deepened the sense of oppression for some Burmese. Democracy advocates are as critical of these corrupt outsiders as they are of their homegrown dictators.

  "China is our next-door neighbor, and it is so huge," said the dissident, who is a lifelong resident of Mandalay. "Even if we built a great wall with bricks very high, a few of them would jump over. But it would be enough. Instead, we've opened the door and allowed them to pour in."
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