Burma's poverty

China makes contingency plans for junta's fall - International Herald Tribune

What is the point of calling the Myanmar government "a communist regime" if a country becomes an "economically embattled nation" when it is sitting on massive "estimated reserves of three trillion cubic meters of natural gas and three billion barrels of crude oil"?

Myanmar is ruled by Military Junta, that does not sound very "communist" but their actions of coming down hard on protests once again, to the disgust of the rest of the world reveals that they are fascists - not communists. Force of will over a population is not communal - it is civil war being conducted by the military government to conquer the will of the people.

China is doing what it can to develop Myanmar as an important trading partner and the difference now is that China is doing this with capitalism. It is hard to decide which is better or worse for the USA or the global balance of power - but China's reawakening under authoritarian rule is, in its own way, no different to the democracy by design that has ruled the USA under Diebold sponsored Republican victories (if indeed that is what happened). It is hard to decide if China - a real politic "threat to democracy" in the 1950s is now less of a threat than the USA who has invaded and interfered with far more intimacy and with many more countries than China.

Yes, China overran Tibet. For that it is hard to forgive - having mixed with the happy go lucky spiritual people of Tibet - I would prefer to visit Tibet under China than Iraq under American control. Yes, it is because the Tibetans are not fighting the Chinese army - that is not to be seen as a sign of acceptance by Tibetans - because the Dali Lama was deported. The same saffron robed troublesome monks are now a problem in Burma. Buddhism used to be the greatest religion on Earth, but its model of measured behavior is no match for a gun. So, Buddhism is being reduced by the slow controlled acts of a nation bursting at the seams from its liberal use of the greatest weapon of all - over population.

The military junta in Burma/Myanmar is afraid of losing control of its population to democracy. Now would that be a problem to China?