Since the beginning of the year, India's army chief, General Ved Prakash Malik, has made two trips to Burma and his Burmese counterpart, General Maung Aye, has visited both India and China. These top-level exchanges have highlighted Burma's importance in the strategic competition between Beijing and New Delhi.
China enjoys a considerable head start in the race to woo Rangoon's military leaders.
Since 1988, Burma has become China's closest ally in South-east Asia, a major recipient of Chinese military hardware and a potential springboard for projecting Chinese military power in the region. The alliance has alarmed India, which in recent years has shifted its strategy away from supporting Burma's opposition movement towards cementing ties with the junta. New Delhi has offered Burma favourable trade relations and cooperation against ethnic insurgents along the Indo-Burmese frontier. New Delhi has engaged in a charm offensive to encourage General Maung Aye to take a more independent foreign-policy stance. Intelligence analysts say that China's economic, political and military influence in the country has already become so strong that it would be hard for Rangoon to reorientate its foreign policy radically.