MENGLA, Myanmar - Parsa, 37, was turning up soil with a hoe on a slope overlooking the road winding south from this village near the Chinese border to the hinterlands of Myanmar's Shan state. He was preparing to plant peanuts. But for generations until just seven years ago, Parsa's family made a living growing opium poppies.
Speaking in Shan through a translator, the deeply tanned man said peanuts were more profitable than bananas, a crop of which he had harvested a month before in the same field.Working 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, although he does not get many chances to use it in the plains. A habit from the highlands, he said.
Until seven years ago, this ethnic-Aini family lived in the mountainous areas in Myanmar, bordering Menghai county just across the border in Xishuangbanna, in southwest China's Yunnan province. Then they reluctantly said goodbye to opium and moved to the plains near Mengla, where they now make a living by planting rice, bananas and peanuts.
Parsa's family is just one of hundreds of families in Mengla, the district seat of the autonomous Fourth Special District of the eastern state of Shan, 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 had also led to the founding of the special district, all of nearly 5,000 square kilometers and 74,000 people, on June 30, 1989, after the China-born drug lord Lin Ming-xian, who had been operating in the area, pledged allegiance to Myanmar's government.
Xie Bin, deputy president of the district's military and political committee, the region's top authority, said 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 kilograms. In May 1991, the local government set fire to the US$150 million heroin-processing factory in Mengla. That marked the start of its anti-drug campaign in this isolated part of the Golden Triangle spanning the border areas of Myanmar, Laos and Thailand, an area known for producing much of the world's narcotics supply.
Efforts to shift farmers away from the crop continued for years, officials and residents interviewed here say, bringing economic benefits to former opium farmers and slashing the supply of drugs to China across the Myanmese border.Mengla is less than 10km from the border checkpoint with China, just inside Menghai county.
In an interview at his home in Mengla, Xie, 57, a former member of China's Red Guards who joined the Myanmese armed forces in the 1960s from Yunnan, said a drastic change in opium cultivation has occurred 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 said in Yunnan- accented Mandarin.
In fact, Xie said, more than 6,000 opium planters have moved from the special district to neighboring areas in Shan state, Laos and even Thailand and continued cultivating opium. "Sometimes they return and plant poppies secretly," he added.At the end of 2001, for instance, officials found 4.7 hectares of poppies in the special district's southern border area and uprooted them after a 200km journey. "That's why we have cooperated with the Chinese police to make an inspection tour for poppy cultivation every year since 1998," Xie said.
But Chinese assistance has gone beyond police action. Officials in Menghai county in Xishuangbanna, across the border, say helping communities in the special district to turn away from opium undercuts the supply of narcotics that flow into China.In 1990, the Mengla government asked the Chinese to help in its campaign against opium planting. The Agriculture Bureau of Menghai 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 explained.
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 kilograms last year. Cao said: "The local government of Mengla spent 1 million yuan [$120,500] buying grain from China 10 years ago. Now it is almost self-sufficient in grain."
At the end of 1992, the Agriculture Bureau helped Myanmar 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.
Cao said the county had invested more than 2.4 million yuan to date in projects that help Myanmar replace poppies with other profitable plants, and invested 10 million yuan in upgrading the road in the region.More than 1,000 Chinese experts have visited the Fourth Special District to provide technical support.
"To a county with a revenue of only 80 million yuan last year, these were all big sums of money," Cao said. "And they have helped prevent the influx of at least 1,000kg of heroin into our country per year.""Actually we're trying to copy the Chinese way of development," said Yang Zi, a police officer in the Fourth Special District also in charge of enterprises invested in the area.
Yang, 32, migrated from Kunming, the capital of Yunnan, to Mengla in 1992, in a movement that underlines the ties between Myanmar and China. More than 80 percent of employees of the district's government are Chinese migrants, he said. Meanwhile, 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-Myanmar border about two kilometers north. Near the pagoda, the Myanmese-style building of the anti-narcotics museum is conspicuous because of its pink color. Hotels, restaurants, nightclubs and casinos line the well-paved streets. Most pedestrians are Chinese. Most signs are in Chinese.
Xie Bin says 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 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) 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 said, "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.These concerns are quite different from the ones locals used to have when the district was dependent on opium - and underline the changes that have shaped this part of the China-Myanmar border region.
"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," Cao mused.(Inter Press Service)