Day: September 13, 2021

The commander of a U.S. aircraft carrier deployed in the South China Sea has told RFA it aims to ensure the “freedom of all nations to navigate in international waters” — a mission that saw it pass just 50 nautical miles from a Chinese survey ship operating in Indonesia exclusive economic zone (EEZ) this weekend.

Global marine traffic records show early on Sunday, the USS Carl Vinson (CVN-70) was sailing in the Natuna Sea off Indonesia, near where the Chinese survey vessel Haiyang Dizhi 10 has been operating since late August.

Unusually, the U.S. super carrier also broadcasted its location, a move that analysts say would be intended to show that it is operating freely in international waters. China claims most of the South China Sea for itself.

In an exclusive interview with RFA on Saturday, the commander of the Carl Vinson Strike Group, Rear Adm. Dan Martin, said: “Our operations in the region are really the expression of our willingness to defend both our interests and the freedoms enshrined in international laws.”

The carrier strike group including the aircraft carrier USS Carl Vinson (CVN-70) and three other military vessels entered the South China Sea last week to conduct “maritime security operations”.

Just a few days earlier, the Chinese Maritime Safety Administration announced that all foreign vessels, including aircraft carriers entering what China considers to be its territorial waters had to notify Beijing and submit to Chinese supervision.

Under international law, territorial waters are the 12 nautical miles of sea extending from a country’s terrestrial territory. But China also includes waters around its newly-reclaimed artificial islands in its maritime jurisdiction despite protests from other countries in the region.

 “Any coastal state law or regulation must not infringe upon navigation and overflight rights enjoyed by all nations under international law,” Martin said.

“Unlawful and sweeping maritime claims including in the South China Sea pose a significant threat to the freedoms of the seas, including freedom of navigation, overflight and lawful commerce.”

“We’re not going to be coerced or forced to cede the international norms,” he said.

‘People’s Liberation Army on alert’

U.S. naval and air forces periodically conduct so-called Freedom of Navigation Operations (FONOPs) to challenge China’s maritime claims in the South China Sea, where a third of global maritime trade transits each year. China has repeatedly denounced these FONOPs.

The Global Times, part of China’s official mouthpiece People’s Daily, has also called the USS Carl Vinson’s deployment “provocative.”

This is the sixth time a U.S. aircraft carrier has been deployed in the South China Sea this year, but the first time with the advanced capabilities of F-35C stealth fighter and the new CMV-22B Osprey tiltrotor aircraft, the Global Times noted.

 The paper quoted a Chinese military expert as warning that the Chinese army has been put on alert, and “China is fully capable of and confident in dealing with such provocations.”

However, according to the commander of the Carl Vinson Strike Group, “all our interactions thus far with the Chinese navy have been professional and safe. As we sail around, we do have some escorts but I haven’t seen any aggressive maneuvering either on the sea or in the air that would give me concerns.”

An RFA review of ship-tracking data showed that as the Carl Vinson passed through the southern part of the South China Sea, it was at one point about 50 nautical miles from the Haiyang Dizhi 10 – one of China’s fleet of survey vessels that periodically conduct research in disputed waters.

The area where the Haiyang Dizhi was operating Sunday is within the 200-nautical-mile exclusive economic zone of Indonesia. Jakarta does not regard itself as a party to the territorial disputes in the South China Sea, although Beijing claims historic rights to parts of that maritime region overlapping Indonesia’s EEZ.

Martin said that due to COVID-19 restrictions, it’s unlikely that the USS Carl Vinson would be able to make any port call on its mission, but the aircraft carrier’s open-ended deployment should “show our partners and allies that we stand with them.”

He reiterated the U.S commitment to defend South China Sea claimant the Philippines should it come under attack, describing it as “our oldest treaty ally in Asia.”

“An armed attack against the Philippine armed forces, public vessels or aircrafts in the Pacific, including in the South China Sea would trigger an obligation under the U.S.-Philippine Mutual Defense Treaty,” Martin said.

Philippine Defense Secretary Delfin Lorenzana was in Washington, D.C., last week to meet U.S. officials. According to a Philippine statement, “both sides agreed to work on a bilateral maritime framework that advances cooperation in the maritime domain.”

Speaking at the Center for Strategic and International Studies think tank last Wednesday, Lorenzana said Manila was seeking to “upgrade and update” the U.S. alliance. He pressed for a clearer “extent of American commitments” under the treaty, which was signed by the two allies 70 years ago.

Cambodian authorities have arrested more than 30 villagers during a violent roundup of land protesters in Kandal province where they were protesting against an airport being built by a company owned by a tycoon with ties to the country’s autocratic leader, provincial police and villagers said.

The land at Kampong Talong village in Kandal’s Beung Khchang commune was taken three years ago by the Overseas Cambodia Investment Corporation (OCIC), a private Cambodian firm, for construction of the U.S. $1.5 billion airport project.

Around 330 families living on the disputed land refused compensation for their fields, saying the amounts offered in payment by the firm were too low.

Police beat the protesters who rallied Sunday, and 31 were arrested for alleged involvement in violence against authorities during the demonstration.

The land dispute between 330 families and the Overseas Cambodia Investment Corporation (OCIC) owned by Neak Oknha (honorific) Pung Khieu Se, an affluent business tycoon close to Prime Minister Hun Sen led to authorities to make the arrests.

Villager Nai Phon, who was monitoring the situation, said that authorities arrested three of his family members — his wife, Khim Chetra, and sisters Nay Phea and Nay Phol, and that police were still searching for and arresting other villagers.

“As a land grab victim, it has been three years since I begged the head of government to help solve this land dispute by giving us fair compensation so that we can accept it, Nai Phon said.

“And now we do not dare to claim the market price. We can accept a reasonable price to end the confrontation and have all the detainees released.”

RFA could not reach Kandal’s police commissioner, Chhoeun Socheth, for comment.

‘It is not a good way’

Am Sam Ath, deputy director of monitoring at Cambodian human rights group Licadho, said that this is the first time in the history of land disputes in Cambodia that authorities have arrested such a large number of people.

“We still insist on not choosing that way, and it is not a good way,” said Am Sam Ath, who condemned the resort to mass arrests.

“First, it affects both sides and draws more criticism over the issue of the land dispute as well as other allegations,” he said. “And if the people are imprisoned, their suffering will be doubled. This means that their families will face more problems.”

This arrest and violent crackdown erupted Sept. 12 after hundreds of authorities prevented farmers from accessing the land. They set fire to the rubbish in front of the security barricades used by local police and military police to block the road to their farmland now under the control of OCIC.

In response, Kandal Provincial Hall accused residents of causing acts of violence involving the use of sticks, stones, rubber bullets, and petrol bombs that injured 13 police officers.

Authorities called on residents to stop what they said were illegal activities and return to efforts to resolve the land dispute peacefully.

Acting on behalf of CIOC, Kandal provincial authorities have offered villagers U.S. $8 per square meter for their land, but villagers say that is much lower than the U.S. $70-80 per square meter estimated market price.

Van Sophat, land monitoring officer for the Cambodian Center for Human Rights, previously told RFA that OCIC had failed to conduct a proper assessment of their project’s environmental impact or to consult Kampong Talong villagers on the proposed development.

The villagers hold title to their land and deserve justice and fair compensation, he said.

Hundreds of police officers blocked villagers on Sept. 7 from visiting rice fields seized to build an airport, though no injuries were reported.

Villagers stopped cultivating their land three years ago, but had to start farming again because business shutdowns caused by the spread of COVID-19 pandemic in Cambodia have left them without other ways to survive, a villager told RFA in an earlier report.

Reported by RFA’s Khmer Service. Translated by Sum Sok Ry. Written in English by Roseanne Gerin.

The final round of a tribunal investigating whether China’s treatment of its ethnic Uyghurs and other Turkic Muslims constitutes genocide ended in London Monday after four days of hearings and testimony provided by nearly 40 witnesses and experts, with a nonbinding verdict expected at the end of the year.

The nine-member tribunal chaired by prominent British lawyer Geoffrey Nice conducted the first set of hearings in London known as the Uyghur Tribunal in early June, during which the panelists heard accounts from internment camp survivors describing abuses such as systematic rape, other forms of gender-based violence, torture, and killings.

During the second round of hearings from Sept. 10-13, nine witnesses and 28 experts testified about their experiences with and research findings on the Uyghur crackdown. The tribunal has no state backing or powers of sanction or enforcement, and any judgments issued are nonbinding on any government.

China has come under criticism for heavy-handed policies targeting the 12 million predominantly Muslim Uyghurs and other Turkic minorities in the far-western Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region (XUAR).

Alleged abuses include the demolition of mosques; the imprisonment of Uyghur intellectuals, artists and business leaders; the replacement of Uyghur with Chinese as the main language in schools; the use of a pervasive and intrusive surveillance system to monitor Uyghurs’ move; forced labor at factories and farms; and forced birth control and the sterilization of Uyghur women.

China has held up to 1.8 million Uyghurs and other Muslim minorities in a network of detention camps since 2017. Beijing has said that the camps are vocational training centers and has denied widespread and documented allegations that it has mistreated Muslims living in Xinjiang.

The U.S. and the legislatures in several European countries have deemed the treatment of Uyghurs and others in the XUAR as constituting genocide and crimes against humanity.

Intimidation of Uyghurs abroad

During the final day of the session, Laura Harth, campaign director for Spain-based Safeguard Defenders, focused in her remarks to the panel on Beijing’s public campaign to intimidate Uyghurs living abroad to prevent them from speaking out on alleged abuses in Xinjiang.

“The so-called counter-evidence that Beijing and local authorities have sought to posit to the world over the past years bear all the hallmarks of yet more human rights violations and seemed to have the sole purpose of intimidating, discrediting, and silencing individual witnesses overseas,” she said.

Barrister Rodney Dixon told the panel that he and two colleagues had submitted a report on crimes committed against Uyghurs in Xinjiang to the International Criminal Court (ICC) in The Hague on behalf of the East Turkestan government in exile and the Uyghur people.

They gathered evidence about Uyghurs being targeted by Chinese authorities in ICC member states, such as Tajikistan and Cambodia, “in order to arrest them and bring them back into China where they are never heard from again and where they are effectively disappeared,” Dixon said.

The report urges the ICC to open a full investigation of the crimes, he said. The ICC can investigate and prosecute war crimes, crimes against humanity, genocide, and the crime of aggression.

Though China has not joined the ICC, the court has jurisdiction to prosecute crimes committed on the territory of member states, even if those responsible are citizens of a country that is not a member of the court.

The tribunal also heard testimony from ethnic Kazakh Gulzire Alwuqanqizi, who was arrested in July 2017 when she entered Xinjiang from Kazakhstan at the Khorgas border checkpoint with the Kazakh equivalent of a green card and a Chinese passport.

Subsequently interned in four different facilities in Xinjiang over more than 14 months, Gulzire was made to take pills, give blood samples, have medical checks, including ultrasounds, and be injected with what she was told was a flu shot, leaving her unable to have children, she said.

Gulzire told the panel she had been kept in shackles for six months at one camp and had to work as a cleaner, bathing female detainees who had been tied to a bed and raped violently by Han Chinese men. She then had to mop up the floor after the sexual assaults took place.

“I saw that Uyghur women were brought to that room, and they were raped, and I had to wash them afterwards,” she said through a translator.

“I would hear them scream and shout and beg for help, but no one would do so,” said Gulzire, who testified that one of the men told her he had paid money to assault Uyghur women.

Involvement of central government organs

Adrien Zenz, a German researcher whose work first brought worldwide attention to the internment camp system, presented the panel with a new report detailing the strong involvement of China’s central government institutions in the mass incarcerations that began in Xinjiang in 2017.

New evidence shows that “three very important central government organs” — the Central Committee Xinjiang Work Coordination Small Group, the Legislative Affairs Commission of the Standing Committee of the National People’s Congress in Beijing, and the State Administration for Religious Affairs — were involved in the drafting of a March 2017 regulation that laid the foundation for the vocational skills education training centers in Xinjiang.

Those groups also helped pass revisions to regulations in October 2018 to fully legitimize the “re-education institutions,” said Zenz, whose new report will be released by the Washington-based think tank Jamestown Foundation on Tuesday.

Chen Quanguo, who has been Communist Party chief in Xinjiang since August 2016 and is considered the architect of the crackdown on Uyghurs, “was likely brought in as a ruthless and efficient implementer of a hatched plan that was outlined and approved by the central government,” Zenz told the panel.

Zenz previously issued reports on China’s internment camps in Xinjiang, the forced sterilization of detained Uyghur women, efforts to reduce population growth in Xinjiang thorough birth control and population transfer policies, and “population optimization strategy” to dilute the Uyghur majority in southern Xinjiang by raising the proportion of Han Chinese.

Chinese state media has vilified Zenz for his research. In March, he was one of 10 European individuals and four entities hit with travel and other sanctions by China in response to European Union penalties imposes on XUAR officials for abuses of Uyghurs.

There was no immediate comment from the Chinese government on the final day of the hearings.

A day before the second session of the tribunal began, the Chinese government asked UK officials to stop the event organizers from conducting the hearings, but to no avail.

“We were told by the British government that it is not part of the ‘tribunal,’ that the ‘tribunal’ is a nongovernmental entity, and that the organization has no legal authority,” said Zheng Zeguang, China’s ambassador to the UK, at a news conference on Sept. 9.

“But the point here is, you should not allow these people to continue to spread rumors about China, because when they do so, they are undermining the good will and trust between the peoples of our two countries,” Zheng told journalists.

The envoy condemned the panel as a “political manipulation aimed at discrediting China.”

“It is a nongovernmental entity funded by anti-China forces,” he said. “It is a fake and has no legal basis or validity whatsoever.”

The Uyghur Tribunal is expected to issue a final verdict on whether China is committing genocide or crimes against humanity in December.

China’s inclusion of Myanmar’s former ruling party in a regional summit is an indication that Beijing believes that the party ousted in a Feb. 1 military coup will continue to be a force in politics, analysts and party members told RFA.

Aung Sang Suu Kyi’s democratically elected National League for Democracy government was deposed in a coup d’état, but the NLD was one of four Myanmar political parties invited to an inter-party event on economic development hosted by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP).

China in June referred to coup leader Sr. Gen. Min Aung Hlaing as “the leader of Myanmar,” a move that The Diplomat magazine said was a step toward “de facto recognition” of the junta. Beijing is among countries that have not publicly condemned the military takeover.

Under its Belt and Road Initiative of global infrastructure spending and lending, China has invested more than $21 billion in Myanmar, and has long been concerned about the stability of its southern neighbor.

Beijing has had contacts with the NLD since the coup. The NLD sent a congratulatory letter when the CCP marked its 100^th anniversary on July 1, and received a letter of thanks from Beijing on July 21.

In a message to junta leaders last month, Chinese officials said they wanted to see the NLD continue to exist as a political party, in response to the military regime’s recently revealed plan to dissolve the NLD, The Irrawaddy online newspaper reported.

Political analysts told RFA’s Myanmar Service that China invited the NLD to the meeting because Beijing is aware that the ousted political party still has strong support among Myanmar’s population of 54 million.

“This just shows that China recognizes the NLD’s continued presence in Myanmar politics. It also shows that Beijing did not accept the military’s attempt to dissolve the NLD,” said Hla Kyaw Zaw, a Myanmar political analyst based in China’s Yunnan province across the border from Myanmar.

“I think the Chinese idea is to have a comprehensive dialogue to resolve the issues peacefully between the military council, the NLD and all the major organizations in the country. China is urging them to find a negotiated solution,” Hla Kyaw Zaw said.

While China has sided with previous military regimes in Myanmar, it has not forgotten the lessons of the past, Ye Tun, a Myanmar lawmaker turned political analyst told RFA.

“China seems to think the NLD will win the elections in August 2023. In reality, we can see that our country’s politics without the NLD will be very difficult to achieve stability.

A U.S.-based analyst of Chinese foreign policy, however, saw only modest significance in Beijing’s gesture to the NLD.

“I don’t think China’s meeting with the four political parties, including NLD, is hedging the bet,” Yun Sun, Director of the Washington-based Stimson Center’s China Program told RFA.

“This is party-to-party diplomacy, rather than state-to-state relations. The NLD is neither disbanded nor declared illegal,” she said. China’s ruling party “faces no constraints to engage the NLD,” Sun added. 

But including the NLD in the meeting does show that China is adjusting to the situation on the ground in Myanmar, a local NLD leader in Myanmar’s largest city Yangon told RFA.

“China must have thought during the first couple of months that the military would gain complete control over the country. But now, seven months after the coup, we have been forced to take up arms and reclaim our territory,” said lawmaker Bo Bo Oo, who represented the NLD at the online meeting and is responsible for the party’s communications with China

“The junta also has no control over the economy. Diplomatic relations with other nations have also plummeted. Under these circumstances, the future of the military council is uncertain,” he said.

“Beijing has changed its perception due to this uncertainty. In my view, Beijing’s analysis of the current situation is closer to the truth than ever before,” said Bo Bo Oo.

Myanmar remains strategically important to China, according to Zin Ma Aung, foreign minister for the shadow National Unity Government (NUG), made up of ousted NLD lawmakers.

“Myanmar is a close neighboring country to China, and the NLD is a major political party. As China adheres to the principles of the Chinese Communist Party, it is more likely that it will continue to engage in inter-party relations,” Zin Ma Aung told RFA.

The other three Myanmar political parties that joined the regional meeting were the military-aligned Union Solidarity and Development Party (USDP), the Arakan National Party (ANP), and the Lisu National Development Party.

A USDP spokesperson attributed the CCP’s inclusion of the NLD and the other parties to Beijing’s broad political vision.

“As the Chinese Communist Party turns 100 years old, its political ideology has broadened,” said Thant Zaw Lwin, deputy head of the USDP Youth Affairs Committee.

Reported by RFA’s Myanmar Service. Translated by Khin Maung Nyane. Written in English by Eugene Whong.

Three weeks after the start of the new semester, teachers of the new “civic and social development” curriculum that replaced Liberal Studies in Hong Kong’s schools say there is scant freedom for classroom debate.

Teachers delivering the new Values Education (Moral, Civic and National Education) curriculum said they were confused over which teaching materials to use, but were less likely to confer with colleagues amid a growing culture of informing on teachers for having the wrong political opinions in schools.

They said the teaching materials are structured so as to ensure there is little room for free discussion and debate among students and teachers in the classroom.

In stark contrast to the Liberal Studies curriculum that was abolished this year, no contemporary news reports are used as examples to illustrate the points being made, they said.

Instead, students were asked to memorize by rote sections of the draconian national security law that was imposed on Hong Kong by the ruling Chinese Communist Party (CCP) from July 1, 2020, ushering in a citywide crackdown on political opposition and peaceful dissent.

Instead of current affairs reporting, speeches by CCP officials were also offered as examples for the topics being taught.

A teacher who gave a pseudonym Wong, who previously taught Liberal Studies for more than 10 years, said all of the topics in the new Values Education curriculum must be taught in the order specified by the education bureau, using approved textbooks.

“The textbooks and syllabus materials define the three treaties [that led to the founding of a British colony in Hong Kong] as unequal treaties, and Hong Kong as an an ‘issue,’ and as an inseparable part of China,” Wong said.

“The biggest difference compared with Liberal Studies is that you could debate the good or bad on both sides of any topic, whereas now … there’s very little room for discussion because Hong Kong is defined as an inseparable part [of China],” Wong said.

According to the Education Bureau website, Values Education includes topics titled National Identity, Law-Abidingness and Responsibility, as well as Integrity and Empathy.

National security education

A primary-school teacher who gave only the surname Lee said national security education, which insists that the national security law protects people rather than criminalizing critical speech and peaceful protest, has been deployed throughout the education system.

“It’s the kids who are suffering the most right now, especially the younger ones,” Lee said. “They are really going through a dark time.”

“There is a huge problem with teachers leaving, because they don’t feel it’s safe to be a teacher any more,” he said. “That’s the very sad state of education in Hong Kong.”

The changes being imposed on schools and universities under the national security law are having a far-reaching impact on civil society.

On Sept. 11, members of Hong Kong’s oldest professional body, the Professional Teachers’ Union, voted to formally disband after repeated denunciations by the CCP-backed media.

“With the worsening of the situation, this is a decision we have to make, actually we’re quite sad about this,” president Fung Wai-wah told journalists on Saturday, in comments reported by government broadcaster RTHK.

The move came after the government said it would stop working with the union, and after it was called a “malignant tumor” by state news agency Xinhua and CCP mouthpiece the People’s Daily.

According to Wong, teachers are now far less likely to discuss their work with colleagues, or share teaching materials.

“If we share our teaching materials, and then they are deemed problematic, they could be used to label us,” Wong said. “Now we’ve been cut off from our peer support, we will get more and more isolated and powerless.”

“Liberal Studies used to be a core subject that would help students qualify for university,” Wong said. “But our role has been reduced to just getting the students through the course, with a pass or fail.”

Oaths of allegiance for teachers

On Saturday, Hong Kong leader Carrie Lam hinted that teachers, along with anyone holding political or administrative public office, could be forced to swear oaths of allegiance to the authorities.

But she didn’t mention schools directly.

“It is not possible to disclose in detail today what kind of public officials and what kind of institutions [this will apply to,” Lam said.

The changes aren’t confined to education for under-18s, either.

The Hong Kong Baptist University announced in July that national security education would be included in its compulsory coursework for undergraduates from Sept. 1, 2021.

Students will be required to pass the course in order to graduate from the university, and must attend a two-hour class with two hours of private study, followed by a test, it said.

Other Hong Kong universities quickly announced they would follow suit.

Translated and edited by Luisetta Mudie.

Chinese authorities have begun removing landmines along the border between southwestern Yunnan province and Myanmar, according to ethnic Chinese living on the Myanmar side.

A committee that runs the Kokang Autonomous Region in northern Myanmar, an ethnic Chinese enclave just across the border from Yunnan, warned local residents that China would be carrying out demining operations, starting Sept. 1.

The area being demined is on the Chinese side of the No. 121-122 boundary markers near Yunnan’s Nansan township, and near the No. 112-113 boundary markers behind Bengkong village, Mengdui township, the notice said.

“Please don’t panic if you hear explosions,” the committee’s notice said. “In order to avoid accidents, please stay away from the above-mentioned areas.”

A Twitter post from ethnic Chinese residents of Kokang also carried the warning, saying the operations would continue through Oct. 31.

The demining operations came after Chinese authorities closed the border as part of efforts to halt the spread of COVID-19. China has built a barbed-wire fence spanning around 1,000 km (620 miles) between Ruili, Lijiang, and the Gaoligong mountains in Yunnan, seen as a bid to stem the free flow of goods and people between the two countries.

Repeated calls to the Zhenkang county government stability maintenance bureau and the township government in Nansan rang unanswered during office hours on Monday.

An employee who answered the phone at the Nansan No. 1 Guesthouse said that military personnel are currently engaged in demining operations in the area, however.

“Yes,” the employee said, when asked to confirm the reports, but had no further information to offer.

Landmines and international law

YouTuber Lin Linqi said he was shocked that the Chinese government had planted landmines — a weapon of war — on its own soil, apparently targeting civilians.

“Basically, landmines can’t distinguish between soldiers and civilians, and that principle of distinction is a basic requirement of international humanitarian law,” Lin said. “What’s more, the damage done by landmines is particularly severe.”

The production, development, use, storage and sale of anti-personnel landmines were banned under a 1999 international convention on the comprehensive ban on anti-personnel mines, known as the Treaty of Ottawa.

China hasn’t signed the Treaty, but voted in 2005 in favor of a United Nations General Assembly resolution on implementing it.

A current affairs commentator who gave only the surname Zeng said the use of landmines is in violation of international law.

“It is an immoral act to use landmines against your own citizens on your own soil, in peacetime,” Zeng said. “This is probably because of the very large numbers of people moving back and forth informally across the border between Myanmar and China.”

“It was hard for them to control that border.”

Cutting off religious exchanges

According to the U.N., landmines kill 15,000 to 20,000 people every year, most of whom are children, women and the elderly, with even more people severely injured every year.

A person familiar with the situation who gave only the surname Zhang said the authorities claim that the border fence was to help prevent the spread of COVID-19, but that they are likely more concerned with religious contacts across the border.

Photos posted to the social media platform Weibo in July 2021 showed the fence snaking across a mountainous region near Ruili, with lights along it during the hours of darkness.

The Gaoligong mountain range straddles the 2,000-km (1,240-mile) border between China and Myanmar, rising to more than 5,000 meters (yards) above sea level.

Ethnic minority groups whose traditional homelands are on both sides of the border would use lesser-known paths through the mountainous border region to cross into Myanmar, sometimes to smuggle goods, but also to learn about Christianity or Buddhism, according to an interview with Zhang in July.

The fence had blocked off the routes used for underground religious contact with Chinese nationals, he said, adding that the CCP is also worried that a roaring arms trade linked to ongoing ethnic armed conflict in Myanmar means that weapons are finding their way across the border, and into the hands of Chinese citizens.

Twenty-five counties in Yunnan province share a border with Myanmar, Laos, and Vietnam, along a a 4,060-km (2,500-mile) stretch of China’s national border in the region.

The China-Myanmar border measures nearly 2,000 km (1,240-mile) with the Sino-Vietnamese border running to more than 1,000 km (620 miles).

Translated and edited by Luisetta Mudie.