by PATRICK BOEHLER
China is wholly involved in the political and economic life of Burma’s would-be breakaway border state of Kachin, at both high and low levels
Two children played on the steep path that leads up to a temple in a sleepy Chinese border town: beyond the temple lies Burma. The children live in Burma, and go to school in China. From the temple hilltop, you can see a vast valley of fields between mountain ranges and banana plantations. There is no fence or guard, so crossing into Burma is just a leisurely walk downhill. The children said that crossing was a daily routine, as it is for thousands of others.
Chinese statistics put the crossings at the main border checkpoint of Ruili at more than ten million people last year. More are expected within the next three years as highway and railway projects are completed and a special economic zone is finalised on the Burmese side. The border areas have so far been mostly undeveloped with few asphalted roads and no linking railway lines. But on the Chinese side, there have been recent infrastructure projects in border towns, providing jobs to migrants from Burma and other parts of China. Chinese investors dominate vast areas on the Burmese side despite ongoing civil war there: peace would promote Chinese infrastructure projects which could provide the Chinese with alternative supply routes away from the contentious South China Sea. (Territorial disputes between China and its neighbours have the potential to cut off vital sea-lanes.)
Burma has been slowly moving towards peace and reconciliation, with national parliamentary by-elections and negotiations with ethnic rebels in the border areas. The Chinese authorities have taken a leading role in mediation with the guerrilla forces, most prominently the Kachin Independence Army (KIA). This has been fighting for self-rule for the Burmese ethnic Kachin community in Kachin State since 1961; the Kachin Independence Organisation (KIO) is its political wing. Their war for first independence and now autonomy was forgotten until very recently. It ended with a ceasefire in 1994, but Kachin State returned to war last June, with the Burmese army and the KIA accusing each other of breaking the ceasefire.
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