We extend a classical vanishing result of Burnside from the character tables of finite groups to the character tables of commutative fusion rings, or more generally to a certain class of abelian normalizable hypergroups. We also treat the dual vanishing result. We show that any nilpotent fusion categories satisfy both Burnside's property and its dual. Using Drinfeld's map, we obtain that the Grothendieck ring of any weakly-integral modular tensor category satisfies both properties. As applications, we prove new identities that hold in the Grothendieck ring of any weakly-integral fusion category satisfying the dual-Burnside's property, thus providing new categorification criteria. We also prove some new results on the perfect fusion categories.