Burmese Daze
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“Rubber is a good thing,” explains Hu Huabin from the Xishuangbanna Tropical Botanical Garden in China’s Yunnan Province. “But the problem is that they are growing too much.”
According to Hu Huabin, rubber was initially only grown at state farms, but has spread all over the region since private farms in China were given permission to grow it. “This has already had an impact on the micro-climate change, as the traditional morning fog in the area is decreasing,” he said.
Large-scale investment in commercial plantations by Chinese companies and the transformation of available arable land for commercial purposes has exacerbated the land availability problem, impacting particularly hard on poor minority villagers. They end up getting access only to the poorest quality land and are routinely forced to work on the plantations.
“In the township I work in, there is a not a single household that does not have to contribute to work on the rubber plantation,” said an international aid worker based in the Wa region. “It is forced, but they receive some payment.”
But another aid worker in the Wa region said that even that is not guaranteed: “It depends on the manager of the rubber plantation. In most cases they do not get any salary, but in return do not have to pay tax. It is a huge problem.”
Meanwhile, local people are not the only ones with reason to be dissatisfied with the impact of opium eradication efforts.
“The opium ban in our area was mainly implemented because of pressure from China,” said a representative of the NDAA, a ceasefire group in the Mong La region. “Now they ask us why there is still so much coming into China from our areas, even though we were the first group to implement the opium ban.”
The Chinese government is clearly concerned about the recent increase in opium cultivation in Burma. It has issued strong warnings to ceasefire groups such as the New Democratic Army-Kachin to stop opium cultivation in the areas it controls. The Chinese government is now carrying out its own opium surveys in Burma.
China has given emergency rice supplies to former opium-growing communities in ceasefire areas across the border. Chinese assistance for crop substitution projects in these areas has, however, only come through private companies that are mainly interested in making a profit. The ceasefire groups are not happy with the Chinese companies working in their regions in the name of alternative development because they do not contribute positively to the development of the regions. These Chinese companies receive loans from the Chinese government to carry out development projects, but in reality they are just doing business. The poppy farmers do not benefit from it.
To prevent exacerbating the hardships already being suffered by rural communities and undermining the sustainability of achievements to date, drug-control policies should be development-oriented. They should take a longer-term perspective and concentrate on putting alternative livelihoods in place for opium farmers. It is vital that the international community does not abandon the Golden Triangle at this crucial time. Without such approaches, it is unlikely that the reduction in opium production will be sustainable.
Tom Kramer is a researcher with the Drugs and Democracy Program of the Transnational Institute (TNI). TNI’s study, “Withdrawal Symptoms—Changes in the Southeast Asian drugs market,” is available at www.tni.org/drugs.
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