The Summer Olympics, scheduled for Beijing this August, may have already helped do at least one good thing — save some Chinese lives. The Chinese government, after brief hesitation, has commendably encouraged a flood of international help in dealing with the vast tragedy of the earthquake that struck Sichuan Province. And authorities have also let Chinese and foreign news media cover the catastrophe with few restrictions, at least by Chinese and other dictatorial standards.

What a difference from the military leaders of Myanmar (formerly called Burma), who have kept out most foreign aid workers and done everything they could to suppress details of the cyclone that devastated its coastal area — warnings of which Myanmar officials even failed to pass on to their long-suffering subjects. The junta fears that outside help and coverage could undermine its murderous and kleptocratic rule. (It is probably right.) So it has in effect consigned tens of thousands of people to slow and agonizing death.

Beijing, however, is much more confident about itself these days, and also concerned, within limits, about its international public image. Consider that China’s hybrid system — capitalistically very open to the world in some ways if still shut off in others — at least ensures that events such as earthquakes have to be treated much more openly than before, say, 2000. A rapidly industrializing country such as China, dependent on the most advanced telecommunications systems, simply cannot keep such news quiet.

Thus it is seeking, without embarrassment, all the help it can get — even from Taiwan! What a difference from the 1976 quake in China, which killed about a quarter of a million people. The communist regime then did everything it could to hide the scope of the death and destruction, thereby worsening it.

But such an effort at a cover-up as China seeks to impress the world with its conduct of the Olympics would be a public-relations disaster for the budding superpower. That the Olympics themselves will happen in China is in part a result of the opening up of its economy and thus, to a point, its society.

The regime that runs Myanmar, however, has so sealed off the country economically and politically that its long-suffering citizens have no such PR protections. (It certainly would not want the risks to its control associated with hosting an Olympics.)

Still, note that its regime’s greatest benefactor and protector is its trade partner China.