We went across Burma about 15 years ago with no reply from ATC at all.
I flew at an intermediate level just in case. Weird.
I transited the Yangon FIR on L301 totally lost comm less than five years ago. We turned the lights on and made position reports in the blind. Other planes on guard had no joy either with the ground guy. I remember thinking that we were lucky not to be over the U.S. for forty minutes without talking to ATC, we'd be intercepted and risk being shot down if there was a misunderstanding.
I've had pretty good luck with wx deviation requests from Shanghai and have been known to fudge a vector off course while waiting for a reply. As others have observed, some of the problem is language. Some of the (other) country boys I work with try something like 'Uh, we'd like to come left a little to get around this cell' instead of 'Request deviation one five miles left of track due weather'.
Does Shanghai use a dice cup for the offsets? I've had mostly stuff like five right but I've occasionally had one like 'offset two miles left'.