RELEVANT LINKS

• UNDCP Profile of Myanmar—Drugs
  

• Drugs, Generals and Neighbours

• Golden Triangle a Threat to China

• Alternatives for Remote Villages in Laos

• The Doi Tung Development Project, Thailand

• Hill Tribes Viewed as Commodities?
• Neighbours Follow Thailand's Dam Examples
  

Read this report in:   THAI  |  MANDARIN  |  BURMESE

Parsa, 37, was turning up soil with a hoe on a slope overlooking the road winding south from this village, located by the Burmese border with China, to the hinterlands of Burma's Shan State.

He was preparing to plant peanuts after harvesting bananas a month before in the same field. With him were his wife and two daughters. On the ground nearby were a teapot, a bamboo basket of sticky rice, and a hunting rifle that Parsa carries everywhere. A habit from the highlands, he says.

Until seven years ago, this ethnic Aini family lived in the mountainous areas in Burma, bordering Menghai county in Xishuangbanna, in south-west China's Yunnan province. For generations, Parsa's family made a living by planting opium poppies.

His family is one of hundreds of families in Mengla, the district seat of the autonomous Fourth Special District of the eastern Shan State, that moved from the highlands to the plains here—and with the cross-border cooperation of China were weaned away from their traditional cultivation of opium.

This effort also led to the founding on Jun 30, 1989 of the special district—all of nearly 5,000 square kilometres and 74,000 people—after the China-born drug lord Lin Ming-xian, who had been operating in the area, pledged allegiance to Burma's government.

According to Xie Bin, deputy president of the district's military and political committee, the region's top authority, 1,099 hectares of poppies were planted in 262 of the 401 villages here at that time. Annual output of opium came to 9,800 kilogrammes.

In May 1991, the local government set fire to the 150 million U.S. dollar heroin processing factory in Mengla, marking the start of its anti-drug campaign in this isolated part of the Golden Triangle spanning the border areas of Burma, Laos, and Thailand, an area known for producing much of the world's narcotics supply.

In an interview at his home in Mengla, 57-year-old Xie, a former member of China's 'Red Guards' who joined the Burmese armed forces in the 1960s from Yunnan, says there has been a drastic change in opium cultivation over the years.

"Since then, poppy cultivation has basically been eliminated in the Fourth Special District, even though from time to time we found poppies planted covertly in some remote areas," he says in Yunnan-accented Mandarin.

In fact, Xie says, more than 6,000 opium planters have moved from the special district to neighbouring areas in Shan state, Laos and even Thailand and continued cultivating opium. "Sometimes they return and plant poppies secretly," he adds.

In 1990, when the Mengla government asked the Chinese to help in its campaign against opium planting, the agriculture bureau of Menghai county in Xishuangbanna, across the border, assisted it in developing alternative livelihoods, such as food processing.

"After their farmers gave up planting poppies, they needed to start up new trades to make a living," Menghai agriculture director Cao Hongqiang explains.

Bureau technicians planted hybrid rice in an experimental plot in Mengla in 1991 and today, about 4,000 hectares are planted to it here, producing 20.1 million kg last year.

At the end of 1992, the agriculture bureau helped Burma build an eight-hectare tea plantation, which has since expanded to 15 hectares. Menghai officials also encouraged Mengla residents to plant sugarcane, rubber trees, mangoes and watermelons.

Mengla has also been looking beyond agriculture. Catering to Chinese tourists, it has changed from a shabby town 12 years ago to a tourist destination today.

A newly completed golden pagoda stands atop a hill overlooking Mengla and the China-Burma border about 2 kilometres north. Hotels, restaurants, nightclubs, casinos line the well-paved streets. Most signs are in Chinese.

According to Xie Bin, Mengla has witnessed an influx of 350,000 tourists per year since 1996, most of them day trippers from China.

But in the years since shifting from opium, the special district in the eastern Shan state has also experienced the downside of a market economy. This year, farmers lost money when, after harvesting more than 4,500 tonnes of watermelons, the Chinese offered too low prices but they had little choice but to sell to them anyway because of limited local demand.

Four years ago, the local government invested 900 million kyat (3.6 million dollars) in the construction of a sugar refinery only to find out too late that there was no market for it over in China, which had surpluses of it.

Speaking in the now-empty refinery, Yang says: "We really hope the Chinese government will give the green light for our sugar. Otherwise, our machines will have to be scrapped in a year or two."

Over in Menghai, Cao still feels guilty for failing to secure a sugar quota for Mengla—but is now working to get a rubber quota as the 100 hectares planted to it will soon begin to yield rubber across the border.

Muses Cao: "To help people in the special district root out opium forever, I think we should cooperate with them and offer them more preferential policies for their development. By helping them, we help ourselves."

(Chen Liang, a reporter for 'China Daily' in Beijing, wrote this article under an Inter Press Service media fellowship programme 'Our Mekong: A Vision amid Globalisation'.)

All photos by Yang Shizhong of 'China Daily', who took these shots under the 'Our Mekong: A Vision amid Globalisation' fellowship programme