After days of consternation since the Feb. 1 military coup in Myanmar, people have finally taken to the streets, holding rallies, marches and demonstrations to protest the military coup and demand a return to a democratically elected government. The protests grew in scale, while the military issued threats and stepped up its mobilization. Considering the country’s history, there are precedents of mass killings of demonstrators by the military, such as in 1988 and 2007, the international community is very concerned about the possibility of a repeat of the tragedy. The military’s crackdown could evolve from high-pressure water cannons and rubber bullets to live ammunition.
The Burmese people have continued to protest, despite the military’s threats, and have progressed to protesting in front of the Chinese Communist Embassy in Burma. Their protest signs indicate why, with one of two signs reading in English, “China, we know you are behind this!” meaning, “China, we know you are behind (the coup)! ” The other sign reads directly in Chinese, “Stop helping the military coup.”
What the Burmese people are protesting is that not only is the CCP endorsing the military coup, but just as the people are demonstrating, the CCP is urgently providing technology and personnel to the Burmese military to help it build a wall to block the Internet. The military, in turn, is stepping up its efforts to craft a so-called “cyber security law” in an attempt to follow the example of the Chinese Communist Party by blocking the Internet to prevent people from communicating with each other and silencing their protests.
The U.S. has introduced two sanctions against the military. The first is to freeze $1 billion in U.S. assets belonging to Burma’s democratically elected government to keep them out of the hands of the military; the second is to impose targeted sanctions on 10 coup leaders, including Burma’s military chief Min Aung Hlaing, and three groups involved in the coup.
The U.S. asked Beijing to condemn the coup, and the latter, of course, was indifferent. But when the Burmese people rose up in protest and protested to the gates of the Chinese Embassy in Burma, the Chinese Communist ambassador only reluctantly stated, “The current situation is totally unwanted by the Chinese side.” It is not that they do not want to see a coup by the Burmese military, but they do not want to see the Burmese people protesting, much less the Burmese people protesting against the CCP.
Everything is expected, or rather, it is a clear game of chess: the CCP supports the Burmese military and endorses their coup and dictatorship; the U.S. supports the Burmese people and stands up for their rights and protests.
This aptly reflects the values and institutional nature of the two great powers, the U.S. and China. As a democratic power, the United States has always sided with the people of other countries, encouraging them to achieve or guard democracy; as an authoritarian power, the Chinese Communist Party has always sided with the dictators of other countries, encouraging them to restore or die in dictatorship.
The world is inevitably divided into two worlds: the free world, the civilized world led by the United States, and the authoritarian world, the barbaric world led by China. Despite the Chinese Communist Party’s efforts to avoid the term “Cold War,” the fact is that the Cold War is not only not over, but is escalating, or rather, a new Cold War is coming again. That is, the Communist Party has replaced the Soviet Union as the largest bastion of communism or authoritarianism, taking over against the United States and the civilized world. Burma today is instantly reduced to a testing ground for the new Cold War.
Fortunately, the democratic camp expanded after World War II; and the wave of democratization spread even faster after the end of the old U.S.-Soviet Cold War. Today, most countries in the world are democracies, while dictatorships are in the minority and withering away. Although the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) has become an economic megalomaniac and has more overall power than the Soviet Union back then, it has only a few associates it can manage, far less than the Soviet Union back then.
Although Beijing can bring back dictatorship in a few or individual countries, such as Cambodia and Burma, through money, bribery and other corrupt means, this is just a fragmentary counter-current in the long history, or rather, a return of the old system, which is not destined to last.
Recent Comments