It’s nearly midnight on Saturday and the dance floor of DJ’s Bar in Rangoon is packed with Burmese youth, grooving to throbbing house music as red, green and yellow light beams flash and slice across the room.

The revellers – young men with hair gelled into modish styles and young women wearing mini-skirts and clutching mobile phones – have each paid a $10 cover charge to enter, a steep price in a land where university lecturers earn just $80 (£50, €57) a month.