China has shown up Myanmar's generals. But it is not too late for outsiders to help the Burmese Eyevine IT HAS taken another catastrophe, this one in China, to show the generals who run Myanmar how better to respond to a natural disaster. Ten days after a cyclone struck Myanmar (formerly Burma) on May 2nd, the xenophobic junta there had managed to ensure that aid from abroad was still only trickling in and most of what had arrived was not being distributed to those who needed it. The United Nations' estimates for the dead and vulnerable were rising dramatically. It was then that a devastating earthquake struck western China. President Hu Jintao at once mobilised soldiers and other workers in an all-out rescue effort. The prime minister, Wen Jiabao, arrived in the region within a few hours, making no attempt to play down this "severe disaster' and saying China would gratefully accept international help (see article). The contrast with Myanmar was telling. So was the contrast with the China of 1976, when an even deadlier earthquake struck the city of Tangshan. The full awfulness of that event