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( Myanmar)
Burma, officially the Union of Myanmar, is the largest country by geographical area in mainland Southeast Asia, or Indochina. The country is bordered by the People's Republic of China on the northeast, Laos on the east, Thailand on the southeast, Bangladesh on the west, India on the northwest, and the Bay of Bengal to the southwest with the Gulf of Martaban and Andaman Sea defining its southern periphery. One-third of Burma's total perimeter, 1,930 kilometres (1,199 mi), forms an uninterrupted coastline. Burma's diverse population has played a major role in defining its politics, history and demographics in modern times, and the country continues to struggle to mend its ethnic tensions. Its political system remains under the tight control of the SPDC, the military-led government, led since 1992 by Senior General Than Shwe. The military has dominated government since General Ne Win led a coup in 1962 that toppled the civilian government of U Nu. The country's culture, heavily influenced by neighbours, is based on Theravada Buddhism intertwined with local elements. In the Burmese language, Burma is known as either Myanma (  ) or Bama (  ), depending on the register used. Since British colonial rule, the country was known in English as "Burma". In 1989, the military government officially changed the English version of the country's name from "Burma" to "Myanmar", and changed the English versions of many place names in the country along with it, such as its former capital city from "Rangoon" to "Yangon" (which represents its pronunciation more accurately in Burmese though not in Arakanese). This prompted one scholar to coin the term "Myanmarification" to refer to the top-down programme of political and cultural reform in the context of which the renaming was done.[3] The renaming proved to be politically controversial on several grounds. Opposition groups continue to use the name "Burma", since they do not recognize the legitimacy of the ruling military government nor its authority to rename the country in English.[4] Various non-Bamar ethnic groups choose to not recognize the name because the term Myanmah has historically been used as a label for the majority ethnic group rather than for the country.[5][6][7]
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