It seems the Chinese are removing any ambiguity in their stance regarding the Myanmar Junta, choosing to openly endorse the Junta by meeting with its leaders face to face. India and Thailand have joined suit, signaling their beliefs the junta is here to stay.
China’s Vice Admiral Lui Zuzhu met with Myanmar’s chief of the General Staff, General Maung Maung Aye while nine junta ministers have also flown to China to meet with officials. Meanwhile, Indian Ambassador to Myanmar, Vinay Kumar, met the Junta’s deputy leader, Soe Win and Thailand’s ambassador to Myanmar met with Myanmar’s electricity minister Nyan Tun.
The reality is the junta is in a similar position the United States was in when we occupied south Vietnam. We occupied the cities but held little sway over the countryside. As Billy Joel says in the song Goodnight Saigon, “We held the day in the palm of our hands. They ruled the night, and the night seemed to last as long as six weeks On Parris Island. We held the coastline, they held the highlands.”
This is the reality in Myanmar, where resistance to the tyranny of the junta has not ended, where the “rebels” have taken to become their own arms manufacturers, building guns and drones that continue to thwart the junta’s efforts to consolidate their power.
But China, India and Thailand are betting that the junta will eventually win, and so they want to be in good standing with the new authority of the land, even as the rightful, democratically elected leaders suffer towards death in prisons.
It is a gamble, this writer believes, they will lose. I doubt very much the rebels, who will eventually take back their lands from the usurpers, will not soon forget what these nations did in their time of need, how they turned their backs on them for the sake of their own petty bottom lines, inured to the suffering of the land.
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