Word: westernizes
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...That inequality struck me as I surveyed the wreckage of Pariaman, where nearly every building had been twisted into a carcass of impossible angles. Unlike New Orleans or other Western locales ravaged by nature, Pariaman will quickly fade from the vocabulary of global disaster. Yet the tales there are no less tragic...
...honest about this: China's long overdue development, whilst in many ways impressive, has primarily been underwritten by profit-driven Western corporations. Corporations have moved to manufacture in China en masse because of very cheap labour, minimal regulation and the ability to externalize other costs, namely the environmental impact. This has then indirectly improved China's lot. How has China otherwise added value or changed the world for the better in modern times? Innovations? Improvements to the human condition? Global benevolence? Becoming the world's temporary sweatshop and biggest copycat does not place one in the league of great nations...
...compatriots they stay up late into Burma's tropical nights to watch live broadcasts from faraway England. So far, so normal. But knowing the grandfather in this touching scene is Senior General Than Shwe, the xenophobic chief of Burma's junta, makes it seem all wrong. Rabidly anti-Western, yet pro-Wayne Rooney, is this the tyrant we know and hate...
...until a new regional giant emerged. "In 1988, nobody in the Burmese military knew how quickly China would grow economically," says Seekins. "But as this was happening [the regime] took advantage of that situation to promote close ties to China." Burma joined ASEAN in 1997, gaining further allies against Western criticism and more trade opportunities (Thailand gets most of its natural gas from Burma), and is improving ties with India. Even at Naypyidaw, once a symbol of seclusion, the junta plans to build an international airport to handle over 10 million passengers a year. "They're much less isolationist than...
...foes, foreign and domestic. The generals regard a threat to their regime as a threat to the nation. This might seem "misguided, even deluded," observes Andrew Selth, a Burma analyst with Australia's Griffith University, but the generals' fear of invasion is real and has been constantly stoked by Western actions and rhetoric. During pro-democracy protests in 1988, the U.S. deployed a naval taskforce off Burma's coast and later lumped the country with Iran and North Korea as an "outpost of tyranny." Whether real or perceived, Western hostility has prompted the junta to take two concrete actions: building...