Saturday, December 15, 2007

Why your country has two names

Dear Ako (elder brother),

I hope you are fine and enjoying your loquacious discussions with Ko Moe, Ko Sein, Ko Han and other your philosophic friends in the teashops in Burma as usual. I safely arrived in the Connecticut School of the US on Sunday and now I am writing you from my computer cluster classroom.

Our teaching assistant for economics is a nice and down-to-earth India-born guy who is also a PhD student of political science in my university. As soon as he appeared in the class, he recognized me that I was the new student. “Are you the new student from Burma?” he asked me in his flamboyant voice. When I nodded my head, he asked me another question,” I couldn’t help asking this question. Why your country has two names?”

Actually, I didn’t know how to answer it. I replied in my natural thinking,” People who love their country call our land Burma”. However Mr. Nice Guy seemed not to be satisfied with my answer.

I think in the future, many people who are interested at our country will be asking me the similar question. I feel shy to myself why I have never thought of this kind of inquiry.

I would love to listen to you how I can answer this question in a thinking way.

Yours,

Nyimalay (little sister)

Thursday, December 6, 2007

The Ganges will still be crying for its falling temples

When the half-hearted Burma's capitalism was drilling the country’s resources to the avaricious swallowing of Big Head, the communist China's road to capitalism has raised its people to unprecedented growth. For Confucius’ people, economics seems to be more important than politics. Actually, the non-genuine nature of Burma's capitalism has shut down itself from globalization and authentic trade liberalization. The investment climate became desiccated like the Arabia deserts. Before I studied here in America, by seeing China’s affluent society I innocently thought, what Burmese required from Big Brother was not Democracy but generous trade liberalization.

The lay man's thinking can probably be cleverer than the smart people in many cases. But we also need to go a little deeper for verifying our common sense. In “Global Inequality”, David Dollar warned me seriously that trade liberalization alone would not work for Burma. China, India, Uganda and Vietnam are doing well in economy catching up with free trade liberalization in this globalized arena. Mr. Dollar said that Burma can not be expected to happen the same because Burma doesn't possess strong institutional structures to support free trade and open economy. Thinking conversely, as long as there are weak institutions granting the big head unbridled power and privileges for its exploitation at the small head, Burma will still fall behind the rest of the world.

To much more surprise, maybe a beginning of harmony from discord, Thomas Pogge added that this was not the mutually exclusive fault of Burma from the rest of the world. Under the existing global rules, the design of the global institutional order itself was the CRITICAL cause for the development of the problems of the world poverty. He said even the most blatantly illegitimate regime like Burma military junta has full entitlement to sell the country’s resources abroad all in the name of the country’s people. Of course, the trouser people always referred themselves as Burmese. There is not even a small trace of institutional structures in this globalized world to hinder this kind of gravely unfair evils' imposture over the people.

Today, the world biggest communist China and the planet largest Democracy India were two big patrons of “Burmese” who always protect this fatherless child from so-called abuses of the Western dominance. Apparently China and India adopts this kind of foreign policy because these two economic men of Asia think Burma economic pie as the zero-sum game. They are afraid that their current economic pie from the military junta will be lost if the Western investment comes in. For me, Chinese and Indian people were short-sighted economists who knows only how to sell the volatile products: they want to do the business on the spot and want to get money outright never thinking for twists and turns in the long run. If Asoka forthwith pays his ruby, Mao will sell a dragon without delay.

In his so far immortal,” The World is Flat”, Thomas Friedman complacent his fellow Americans’ anxiety over growth of China. He said the more developed China is, the much bigger market size will be the US because now, the more developed China has more purchasing power to consume the US products. I would like Chinese and India leaders to see how the world has already become flattened and change their current “ruby at once and dragon at once” thoughts. According to the spatial correlation theory, the US’s biggest trade partner was the developed and its bordering Canada. I believe Friedman's theory is a universal and timelessly true principle to be applied everywhere in the world where people always want to see themselves as different and couldn't find out a harmony. Imagine the opulent spending tendency of Burmese and how much aggressive in business doing nature of native Indians and Chinese in Burma. The developed Burma in the long run will inevitably and dramatically expand Asoka and Qing Shi Huang’s market empires to many times the size of the current scopes who are pathetically trying to divide a small piece of cheese under the scorns and pointing fingers from many parts of the world.

Allowing to transform Burma into the model of Western democracy and foreign investment is indeed, a win-win situation for both countries and Burma. The world is still too young to be unstinted from barbarian self-interest, a vision to find harmony, and to seek a bonhomie of brotherhood and justice.

To cap, Burma has fallen a victim to the prisoner's dilemma from materialistic thinking of two Asia superpowers. These two Asia superpowers may probably envision themselves that they are so smart for their people. In reality, they are still the jungle men. When the jungle men see a hen, they try to kill at once and eat at once. They have never thought of the wise men's way of letting the hen alive so that those wise men can enjoy the chicken eggs forever.

"Give a man a fish, he will eat for a day", Lao Tsu, the Taoism founder of China, had ever said. "Teach a man how to fish, he will eat for the whole life", Lao Tsu had directed his Middle Land fellows a universal truth. Nevertheless, China has never been a country to accept Lao Tsu's idea of trying for living honestly with the nature. In India, Swami Sukhabodhananda said “One’s effort becomes divine when where one is able to convert his business into a temple and not a temple into a business”. The Ganges River will still be crying with silent tears for the coming temples converted into business as the world will still not be a divine.


Saturday, December 1, 2007

Beseeching Buddha's delegate



Look Down, Fair Moon


L
OOK down, fair moon, and bathe this scene;


Pour softly down night's nimbus floods, on faces ghastly, swollen,
purple;

On the dead, on their backs, with their arms toss'd wide,
Pour down your unstinted nimbus, sacred moon.

Walt Whitman