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Or since the Chinese called Burma "Mien Tint", should we say the tango of the Chinese and Myanmar (Burmese) regimes?

Gen Ne Win’s speech at Rangoon University o­n the occasion of a worker’s seminar o­n April 30, 1965 is well-known among those who followed the late dictator’s speeches.

Apart from speaking about his ears being pierced as a boy, Ne Win stated in his speech that his father—who actually died the year he made the speech—had Burmese tattoos. He told the audience that the nats (spirits) his family worshipped were not the Chinese spirits, but the traditional Burmese spirits. And when Ne Win’s grandmother died, the family did not inter her in a grave.

Ne Win, then Chairman of the Revolutionary Council, claimed this was proof that his family did not practice ancestor worship and were therefore not ethnic Chinese. But all this was mentioned in a somewhat light-hearted and not jingoistic manner. When the speech was printed in newspapers, it was interspersed with lines like "laughter from the audience" indicating that the audience did not react "jingoistically" to Ne Win’s speech. Ne Win even said that if he was of Chinese descent he would openly acknowledge the fact, since o­ne shouldn’t be embarrassed about the race of o­ne’s parents.

So I don’t think it was his speech that roused "anti-Chinese fervor" in Burma. The discontent in the rainy season of 1967 had been brewing because of rice shortages and anger over economic mismanagement.

Military intelligence (MI) officers tried to "channel" and displace the increasing restlessness and discontent of the people. The wearing of Mao badges by students in a Chinese school in Rangoon provided an opportunity for MI to make the Chinese, or some Sino-Burmese, the scapegoat and the riots against the Sino-Burmese broke out in Rangoon in late June 1967.

But the junta couldn’t channel all of the public unrest and anger. In Arakan State, up to 100 rice looters were reportedly shot o­n Aug 13, 1967. As with the ambush at Depayin o­n May 30, the anti-Chinese riots of late June 1967 and the 8.8.88 massacres, we may never know the real number of casualties.

I do not believe that there was even a causal link between Ne Win’s speech of April 1965 and the anti-Chinese riots that took place more than two years later.

The militant Red Guardism which was sweeping through China at the time spilled over, in a diluted form, to a few Chinese schools in Rangoon. This might have given MI and Ne Win’s government an opportunity to "redirect" the people’s anger by encouraging the anti-Chinese riots.

Pho Thar Aung acknowledges that China’s current "non-interference" has not always been Beijing’s way. China’s apparent brokerage of the failed 1963 peace talks with the Communist Party of Burma (CPB), and the even less successful mediation in 1980 (where Ne Win and the late CPB Chairman Thakin Ba Thein Tin met secretly in Beijing) are given as examples of China’s "will to interfere."

But the mediation—if it can be termed that way—of China in 1963 and 1980 was o­n behalf of a "fraternal" communist party who was then in an armed rebellion or insurgency against Rangoon. I do not think the Chinese party and state authorities will consider the National League for Democracy as a "fraternal" party, nor will they see Aung San Suu Kyi as a comrade.

The fact that China’s current strategic competitor and erstwhile ideological enemy, the United States, has spoken out strongly against the junta and imposed sanctions will give China reason not to criticize the SPDC. Moreover it is clear that China would not even help "mediate" between the SPDC and Aung San Suu Kyi and the NLD as another of China’s strategic partner ASEAN has been doing—albeit somewhat feebly—these past few weeks.

I also suspect that many of China’s elites would consider Aung San Suu Kyi as a "Western tool," or at least see the US and the West as an ally of Aung San Suu Kyi. o­n this ground alone, far from "helping" or "promoting" reconciliation talks between the junta and the NLD, Chinese leaders might even actively try to hinder Burma’s democracy movement.

The realities of international relations, Chinese, Burmese and regional power politics, are all forces that would militate against China forcing the generals to face up to their misdeeds. China’s support for the junta is totally unsurprising and is fully expected.