Burma refugees carry lesson in imperialism to China

For China, the cost of oil and gas has just doubled. You will not find this new oil price quoted anywhere, but its burden will weigh heavily on the leadership in Beijing.

It is not an oil price that can be measured in dollars per barrel on the New York Mercantile Exchange. There has been no cutback by Opec, nor has a hurricane toppled offshore platforms in the Gulf of Mexico. It is China’s oil price; the cost of oil for the People’s Republic is now measured in refugees, in tens of thousands of people fleeing Burma into China.
The UN High Commissioner for Refugees said on Friday that as many as 30,000 people had crossed the Burmese border into Yunnan province in southwest China. An assault by the Burmese Army on the Kokang militia, an ethnic Chinese rebel group in Shan state, started the flight, but the refugees mean much more than a spot of trouble on the border. The brazen assault by Rangoon threatens to wreck China’s carefully drawn strategy to transform Burma into a trading corridor of highways and oil and gas pipelines bringing energy and minerals into China’s heartlands.

China’s loss of face might not have been so obvious had it not been for Daewoo’s announcement of last week. The South Korean conglomerate trumpeted its participation in the Shwe gas project, a $5.6 billion (