China not likely to rebuke Burma

发生在缅甸的暴行遭到全世界的谴责，除了中国。中国在联合国上对制裁缅甸投的唯一的一个反对票对缅甸目前局势起到什么作用我不知道，但是这种行为显然和中国的大国身份不太相符。初中我就学过，中国的指责包括维护世界和平，当时我就笑了。现在想想，原来大家什么时候都是在维护自己的利益。缅甸的地理位置就是我们的利益。下面是USA Today的新闻。

BEIJING — Burma’s bloody crackdown has silenced Buddhist monks and other protesters but raised calls for China, the country’s top ally, to push for change in the isolated, military-led nation also known as Myanmar. （独裁就是落后的代表，永远都是）

China buys oil, natural gas, timber, gems and minerals from Burma, and 2 million Chinese migrants now work in the country of 50 million.

Before Burma’s generals sent troops into the streets last week to crush protests, China issued rare calls for restraint. Since then, China has been largely silent, despite helping to arrange a visit to Burma by United Nations envoy Ibrahim Gambari.（真河蟹阿。。。）

Analysts say they do not expect China to take a more active role, akin to the one it has in Sudan. China sent a special envoy to Sudan to try to defuse tensions in Darfur after calls by international activists to boycott the 2008 Beijing Olympics. (中国办奥运真是不容易阿，又要国内河蟹又要被国际各种组织抵制）

As in Burma, China has powerful commercial interests in Sudan. But China’s political influence over its Asian neighbor is limited and its priority is stability in the region — not a more open, democratic Burma, experts say.

“People expect too much of China, yet it doesn’t really have much clout. The Chinese don’t want regime change in Burma. They are comfortable dealing with this regime,” says Bertil Lintner, a Bangkok-based expert on Burmese affairs. “We can expect quiet diplomacy at best.”（中国从美国身上学到了很多很多。。。）

Burma was a vassal state of China until the British took over in the 19th century. Today, the Chinese are back, providing military and financial aid to their secretive neighbor.

First lady Laura Bush has argued that Beijing can move Burma’s intensely wary military junta — which is accused of widespread human rights violations including slave labor — in the right direction.

China has a “huge amount of influence over Burma,” she said in July, criticizing Beijing for “propping up” a failed state.

Laura Bush suggested pro-democracy groups could use China’s desire for a smooth, politics-free Olympics to press Beijing to uses its influence to get Burma’s generals to ease repression.

Others argue that China must tread carefully because it is hampered by its history, which includes past support for Burma’s opposition Communist Party. “The Burmese don’t like China and see it as a big, dangerous neighbor,” Lintner says.

Burmese fear economic domination by China. The Chinese “do not want to jeopardize the influence they have gained since then by being a big bully,” Lintner says.

Ian Storey, a fellow at the Institute of Southeast Asian Studies in Singapore, agrees. “There is a long tradition of xenophobia and nationalism in Burma. The Chinese have to be very careful. … At one point in the protests, the monks stopped outside the Chinese Embassy, and the protests had a bit of an anti-China feel — ‘You’re the ones giving the oxygen of support for this regime,’ ” he says.

China and Burma grew close in the early 1990s, when both were shunned by the West for crushing pro-democracy protests — in 1988 in Burma, and 1989 in China.

China’s Communist-dominated domestic politics also explain its reluctance to intervene.

“If you support peaceful political change in Burma, then it opens too many doors and questions like ‘Why aren’t you supporting it here?’ ” says Russell Leigh Moses, a Beijing-based China specialist.

Professor Shen Dingli, an international relations expert at Shanghai’s Fudan University, says that China won’t step in and try to calm the regime in Burma because of its long-held view that dissent is strictly an internal matter.

“Morally, China is doing no better than Myanmar, and we are in no position to tell them what to do,” Shen says. “China has used tanks to kill people on Tian_*n_men Square (in 19-89). It is Myanmar’s sovereign right to kill their own people, too. Only the U.N. Security Council can decide who can intervene.”（无语了。。。。）