Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Kong Quan told a press conference that China had early that month changed its guard on the border with Myanmar in Yunnan province, with People's Liberation Army (PLA) soldiers taking over the border defense responsibilities from local armed police. He said the move was a normal adjustment and had been completed, adding that many journalists had asked him about the issue the day before.

Intrigued by Kong's remarks, Asia Times Online sent a team to the southern province of Yunnan, and into Myanmar itself, to investigate the nature and scale of the border "adjustment", and to try to determine why it is taking place. Had a US military force been secretly deployed inside Myanmar, as one rumor had it? Or, more likely, was Beijing worried that the embattled military dictatorship in Yangon was losing control of the country all on its own, without interference by Americans in the shadows?

ATol found that Kong did not tell the whole truth by describing the deployment as a routine adjustment. The deployment is large, and existing border patrols have not been replaced, but have been reinforced by well-equipped units of the People's Liberation Army (PLA).

A restaurant owner in a night market near the southern border witnessed the "military adjustment" one night in early September. He said the fleet of army trucks from Kunming, the capital of Yunnan province, and other places could have numbered in the hundreds, to say nothing of other vehicles. It took about 10 minutes for these trucks to pass by his door. They were heading toward Yunnan's border with Myanmar within the province's Xishuangbanna autonomous prefecture.

As with the situation on the Sino-North Korean border at the end of September, the changes on the China-Myanmar border were clearly reinforcements, not replacements. The existing border police were not removed; in fact, to make things more complicated and mysterious, some of them were transformed into a "mobility brigade". For local residents, this is one of the signs of prewar preparations.

There were still mathematical equations chalked on the blackboards of the classrooms of the number 8 middle school in Hlaing Tha Yar Sunday, but the only lesson being given was one of survival.

Since the cyclone hit, the school, in a village near Rangoon, has been turned into an impromptu refugee centre, with some 2,040 of the displaced crammed inside. About 17 families were camped in each classroom, including many nappy-less babies laid on the desks.

Mai Paw, her husband and their six children had sought refuge in the school as soon as the high winds flattened their shack. Sunday they, and their 50 or so noisy roommates, batted away swarms of flies as they each ate the scoop of rice handed out by the charity World Concern. "We have lost everything. We have no house and no jobs," said Mai.

They planned to stay in the school for as long as it took for the relief effort to rebuild their neighbourhood. Instead a government officer told them yesterday to expect an eviction, to make way for a polling station. Burma's ruling elite has rescheduled the referendum for May 24.

When one of Myanmar's best-known movie stars, Kyaw Dhyu, traveled through the Irrawaddy Delta in recent days to deliver aid to the victims of the May 3 cyclone, a military patrol stopped him as he was handing out bags of rice.

"The officer told him, 'You cannot give directly to the people,' " said Tin Win, the village headman of the stricken city of Dedaye, who had been counting on the rice to feed 260 refugees sleeping in a large Buddhist prayer hall.

The politics of food aid -- deciding who gets to deliver assistance to those homeless and hungry after the cyclone -- is not just confined to the dispute between Myanmar's military junta and Western governments and outside relief agencies.

Even Myanmar citizens who want to donate rice or other assistance have in several cases been told that all assistance must be channeled through the military. This restriction has angered local government officials such as Tin Win, who are trying to help rebuild the lives of villagers. He twitched with rage as he described the rice the military gave him.

MILITARY-RULED Burma, among the globe's poorest and most authoritarian nations, is reeling from a natural disaster of such magnitude that both the people's suffering and political aftershocks are certain to persist long after the last emergency aid has been doled out.

As bloated bodies are counted and survivors face disease and hunger in the wake of Cyclone Nargis, dramatic scenarios are foreseen in a country that has changed little since an army coup 46 years ago.

These range from a revolt led by disenchanted army officers to the specter of the entrenched, xenophobic junta allowing thousands more to perish rather than risk its grip on power by opening gates to the outside world.

A sprawling new capital dubbed the "Abode of Kings", lavish weddings for family members, palatial villas -- Myanmar's ruling generals appear to have few qualms about spending money.

After more than 45 years of isolation and military rule, Myanmar is officially one of the world's poorest countries, with per capita gross domestic product (GDP) well below that of nearby Cambodia, Laos and Bangladesh.

The junta spends just 0.3 percent of GDP on health care, and 1.3 per cent on education, UN figures show. Yet while ordinary people grow poorer, critics say the generals have been lining their pockets with profits from the nation's vast bounty of oil, gas, tropical hardwood forests, and mines brimming with gems.

Economic sanctions from Europe and the United States were tightened after last year's deadly crackdown on demonstrations sparked by rising fuel costs, but booming Thailand, India and China continue to be big customers.

"But even those are running out."

Apart from the sound of children crying, the town of Labutta is strangely silent.

Traumatized by the ordeal of surviving Cyclone Nargis, few people have anything to say. But it is also fear bred by 46 years of repression by military regimes that keeps them quiet.

Although overwhelmed by the worst disaster in Myanmar's recent history, the junta has turned down foreign help and insists on using its ragtag infrastructure and poorly equipped military to conduct a grossly mismanaged relief operation for some 2 million people in distress. Read more

Burma's military regime has plastered boxes containing international relief supplies with the names of top generals.

State-run television continuously showed images of the country's top generals -- including Senior Gen. Than Shwe, the junta's leader -- handing out boxes at ceremonies.

The junta has so far refused to allow foreign experts to deliver aid to assist their country, ravaged by Cyclone Nardis, saying it will only accept donations and then take responsibility for distribution.

"We have already seen regional commanders putting their names on the side of aid shipments from Asia, saying this was a gift from them and then distributing it in their region," said Mark Farmaner, director of Burma Campaign UK. "It is not going to areas where it is most in need," he said in London.

The military junta that rules Myanmar held a planned referendum on a new constitution Saturday despite the widespread devastation caused by last week's fatal cyclone.

The government has postponed the voting in cyclone-affected areas, but U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon has urged the government to delay the referendum altogether so it can focus on cyclone relief efforts.

The ruling junta was on Friday criticized by the United Nations for allowing aid planes to land but then refusing to let foreign charity workers distribute the supplies.

First off, I'm not sure what's more tragic: the damage caused by the cyclone or the paranoid Myanmar government's refusal to let in outside aid workers -- letting their own citizens die. As an American citizen, this especially pisses me off because it's not too often that I agree with the decisions of my president.

A SHIPMENT of high-energy biscuits that could feed 95,000 survivors of Burma's Cyclone Nargis remains impounded by customs at the airport in Burma's largest city Rangoon, a World Food Program (WFP) spokesman said.

More than 24 hours after the supplies landed in military-run Burma, they are still no closer to reaching the more than 1.5 million people at risk of disease and starvation in the worst-hit areas, he said.

"My understanding is that it has not yet been released into our hands, but we are working around the clock to get access,'' said Marcus Prior, a Bangkok-based spokesman for WFP.