The China-Burma Connection

Kerry Howley argues that the PRC has less influence over the ruling junta in Burma than a lot of people would like to think, and cites a variety of experts to that effect. Burma is, in her telling, something of a DPRK-lite whose rulers have deliberately courted isoloation in order to avoid being subject to foreign pressures. See more on the general theme of Burma-related China-bashing from James Fallows and Steve Clemons. To make a long story short, the notion that the US can productively bully China into bullying the Burmese generals into turning their country into a democracy seems like one of these pieces of foreign policy wishful thinking that the country’s had quite enough of already.