Last Friday’s “global week in review” in the Chinese on-line edition of People’s Daily led with “Fukuda assuming the position of prime minister; Ahmadinejad touring the United States with flair.” Buried in the middle of the right-hand column, just below a report on the September 26 collapse of a bridge in Vietnam, a story on developments in Burma carried the heading “September 24: more than 100,000 protest in Myanmar; the government eats its own bitter fruit.” The posting is linked to other Burma-related news items, none of which mentions the regime’s use of force to break up the demonstrators earlier in the week. Domestic Chinese media coverage of developments in Burma has been, at best, sketchy. The information gap is being filled by foreign broadcasters and China’s resourceful Internet users. For example, on the blog run by the popular Web portal sina.com, a Time magazine article recounting the bloody crackdown has been translated into Chinese. The same blog site ran on September 29 a report cut and pasted from Singapore’s Lianhe Zaobao claiming that Than Shwe and other leaders of the junta had arranged for their families to leave Burma for Laos and perhaps Macao, a development that the paper suggested could be a “harbinger of a massacre.” The prevailing sentiment among those posting comments in Chinese cyberspace may help explain why the official media have played down the situation in Burma. Burmese monks are being praised for “sacrificing themselves” by “standing up to guns and bullets with their mortal bodies” so that “the people may become the master in their own house.” By contrast, Chinese monks are being ridiculed as “heavy-jowled and potbellied” and “self-satisfied” with the little they have attained. Another posting features foreign wire service photos of rifle-toting Burmese security forces and demonstrators demanding the release of Aung San Suu Kyi. Further down in the display is a picture of a sign with Chinese characters that read “support democracy in Myanmar; condemn the violent crackdown” and, in English, “Taiwan supports democracy in Myanmar.” While these postings managed to avoid being censored, some bloggers have registered complaints that the “politically conscientious” operator of sina.com had deleted other entries about Burma:
Another blogger indirectly criticized Chinese censors in the course of praising the courage of the Burmese people: “The Burmese government monitors people’s e-mail and other means of communication and blocks access to websites that promote democratic reforms… But the Burmese people did not bow to the enormous pressure from the government… It just goes to show that the wave of justice and democracy cannot be stopped by unreasonable restrictions.” While sympathetic to the cause of the Burmese demonstrators, however, China’s on-line population does not necessarily agree with the insistence of the international community that Beijing take a tougher stance against the junta. A representative view:
And, while decrying corruption in Burma, a journalist-blogger wonders “why so much is expected of China.” China is caught in a delicate situation, she contends, as it needs Burma’s cooperation to curb the drug flow from the Golden Triangle. Beijing must play its cards carefully, because there is also the issue of Burma’s strategic importance to China’s energy security:
