Saturday, April 17, 2010

Burma and the Chinese (and Singapore and India)

From Paul Theroux's Train to the Eastern Star:

At a fruit stand, he said, "Eighty five percent of the people are against the government." He sipped his juice. He said, "The other fifteen percent are government relatives. And Chinese."

I had come across this hatred for the Chinese on my first trip. I heard much more of it this time, because the local Chinese were now able to make deals with the bureaucrats and traders in the People's Republic. They were in the gem trade, the drug trade, in food and wood export. The mansions of Mandalay, in walled compounds, were mainly owned by Chinese merchants. The Sinocentric Singapore government, the People's Republic, and India were supporters of the Myanmar military dictatorship...

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