ABSTRACT
A series of events in the late 1960s had a profound effect on Burmese development policies. The economy by 1967 was in serious trouble. In 1967, the year of the anti-Chinese riots, the Cultural Revolution came to Rangoon. In June, the Burmese rioted against the Chinese from economic motives as much as from nationalistic fervor. The Chinese had been accused of hoarding and thus raising prices in their shops during the rice crisis. In September 1968, the major irritant to security in Burma Proper was removed when Thakin Than Tun, leader of the Burma Communist party (BCP) was assassinated by a member of his own group. The BCP remnants from central Burma retreated into the wild and inaccessible reaches of the Wa State, across the Salween on the China border. The policy implications for Burma were momentous. The industrialization strategy of the nation, the doctrinaire approach to a socialist state, was abandoned.
