Published in:
Journal of Southeast Asian History, 5 (1964) 1, Seite 29-61
Language:
English
DOI:
10.1017/s0217781100002210
ISSN:
0217-7811
Origination:
Footnote:
Description:
No international concern has been as important to Burma as her relations with China. Kuomintang China had encouraged the Burmese nationalists, had sponsored Burma's entry into the UN but had also exhibited (in various published maps and otherwise) traditional Chinese expansionist tendencies toward Burma and mainland Southeast Asia. Most of all, after 1950, Kuomintang China endangered Burma's relation with Communist China by her active, irresponsible support for her troops who had escaped via Yunnan into northeast Burma. However much the Burmese may have initially and quietly tolerated the presence of these KMT “escapees,” – a view which has been unofficially hinted in some Burmese and American quarters — expecting that they would either merge into the Burma population or quickly repatriate to Taiwan, at the end of the first year of experience with these troops the Burmese became justifiably alarmed, repeatedly sought but did not receive assistance from the United States for this repatriation and eventually, in 1953, officially took the issue to the United Nations. (It was this issue which brought U.S. prestige and relations with Burma to a postwar low.)