Maoists Back Burma

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Last week the Burmese military dictatorship headed by President Ne Win claimed to have wiped out a sizeable proportion of the rebel Communist Party guerrilla army which has for years been fighting a war against the regime.

The guerrillas, who operate from bases in China, are said to number 8000. The regime last week claims to have killed 800 of them in one operation.

Of course, it would not be improbable that the Ne Win regime should exaggerate such figures since its own survival has been increasingly threatened in the last few months by a series of events, one of which is the growing military success of the CP rebels.

Alliance

They have been forming alliances with a number of the peoples of the interior of the country who have been traditionally opposed to rule from Rangoon.

But the event may have a broader significance. If the defeat for the CP guerrillas was anywhere near as great as the Ne Win regime claims, it could be one of the bitter fruits of a new unprincipled opportunist turn in the foreign policy of the Chinese The government of Hua and Teng has recently been conducting a campaign for anti-Soviet allies around SouthEast Asia. The Chinese make no stipulation about the ideological complexion of their potential allies.

They have been wooing with equal ardour the right wing anti-communist dictatorship in Thailand, the left' anti-communist dictatorship in Burma and the Stalinist regime in Cambodia.

Anti-Soviet

Having forged alliances with these governments, the Chinese leaders have set about trying to reconcile the regimes with each other in order to produce an anti-Soviet alliance.

As far as the Chinese leaders are concerned, the fate of the Burmese CP seems to be of no importance. What is more important is for Ne Win to weed out all pro-Soviet elements from his regime.

That is part of the meaning of the series of wholesale purges of the government and Ne Win's bureaucratic 'party', the Burma Socialist Programme Party.

In 1976, 50,000 oppositionists in the party were purged. These included a right wing group in the cabinet who favoured a more openly pro-imperialist economic policy; and they were followed by another group with reputedly pro-Soviet positions. They were arrested last September.

What Ne Win has preserved between these two 'extremes' is not socialism. It is the strengthening of his own dictatorship and his ability to manoeuvre in an unprincipled way in foreign and domestic policy.

This trend is confirmed by the latest government purge in which Ne Win has appointed a new cabinet, the majority of whose members are from his trusted military intelligence service.