Locals Fear Chinese Flooding into Northern Burma April 18, 2005
Hka Aung/ Myitkyina
Residents in northern Burma have been inched up fears against thousands of migrant Chinese workers employed at logging and mining companies which are extracting natural resources in Kachin State. Local also feel that the present of Chinese migrant workers has led to create social and economic problems.
An estimated 40,000 migrant workers from China, in the last three years, have come to Hokat and Thabadaung villages in inner Kachin State, according to villagers from Hokat. Another 10,000 Chinese workers are expected to arrive in Hokat in the near future, according to one Hokat resident. The two villages, situated about 70 miles (112 kilometers) south of Myitkyina, the capital of Kachin State, serve as a strategic transit point for timber coming from the areas west of the Irrawaddy River. Previously quiet villages near the cross roads of the logging trade have been transformed into boom towns to cater to the influx of Chinese loggers.
Accompanying this mini-commercial boom is a rise in the number of casinos and brothels. “Casinos and brothels look likes mushrooms growing in rainy season,” said an elder from Thabadaung village. Most of the patrons are Chinese.
Over the past decade, the Kachin State has experienced a mini-economic boom as the government and Kachin cease-fire groups have begun granting timber and mineral concessions. This economic growth is accompanied by uneven development as well as an increase in both Chinese owned businesses and Chinese migrant labor, which has created resentment among some Kachins.
Many Kachins feel left out of the economic windfall and this has created anti-Chinese resentment. “No one benefits from the Chinese and the logging business”, said a Myitkyina resident who just visited Sinbo. Villagers in Sinbo can’t even sell local products because of Chinese workers bring their own supplies and rations from China, he added.
While logging concessions are granted by both the Burmese government and the Kachin Independence Organizations, the extraction of timber is unregulated, which has led to clear cutting. Resident from Sinbo township, another logging transit location on the west bank of Irrawaddy river near Hokat, said logging companies are cutting soft and under-aged wood due to the depletion of hard woods. Chinese companies have received concession for the western region of the Irrawaddy River, because of the depletion of logs on the eastern side of the river.
According to one KIO officer, an estimated 2,000 to 3,000 workers from China have settled in Hokat to work in the logging concessions west of the Irrawaddy River.
Many of the concession have been granted to Chinese businessmen, who have imported labor from China rather than using local workers. While the KIO has provided a handful of work permits to workers from China, most of the migrant labor is unregulated.
China’s appetite for timber stems from recent Chinese prohibitions on logging in China. With the lack of regulation in the Kachin State, Chinese companies are carrying out large-scale, unregulated logging and mining operations. Timber exports from the Kachin State to China are estimated at 600,000 cubic meters per year and valued at US$150 million, according to a report by the UK-based environmental NGO Global Witness.
The concessions are awarded by not only the Burmese government, but also by two Kachin cease-fire groups, the New Democratic Army-Kachin and Kachin Independence Organization. The logging concessions provide the primary source of revenue for the operation of the cease-fire groups. Many Kachins are concerned that the revenues from the natural resource concessions are not filtering down to benefit society. A KIO officer, however, said that the logging revenues fund not only the KIO, but also support development projects in the Kachin State, such as constructing the Myitkyina-Bhamo highway in Kachin State.
