Peking and Rangoon

Abstract

In hisBurma in the Family of Nations(Amsterdam, 1956), Dr. Maung Maung, Burma's modern jurist-scholar, tried to dissipate the impression —created according to him by Chinese nationalist pride rather than legal rights—that Burma had at any time in her history borne tribute to the Imperial Court of China. It must have made him shudder that hundreds of his compatriots should shout “Chou En-laiwan sui” when the latter visited their country in mid–April 1960. For Burma relations with mainland China in recent years have been in many ways difficult. When China under the Nationalists had to trade space for timevis-à-vispowerful Japanese invaders in the late 1930s, the building of the Burma Road almost inevitably led to a common defence of the two neighbours in later stages of the Second World War. Between 1942 and 1945 Chinese troops were in and out of Burmese territory, and Burmese freedom fighters and independence leaders likewise used China as their shelter and planning headquarters. The Chinese Nationalist Government expressed its readiness to exchange Ambassadors with Burma in September 1947, when the latter had hardly completed the formalities of its independence pact with Britain. But no sooner had the Burmese envoy been appointed to Nanking than the latter had to face the menace of the Chinese Communists, whose leader, Mao Tse-tung, had himself supported Burmese independence as early as 1945.