The Golden Triangle is where the borders of Thailand, Laos and Myanmar meet. Covering an area of 200 square kilometers, it has two million inhabitants. It produces gold and teakwood, but is best known for opium and heroin production. It is the world's most notorious drug trafficking territory.

The route from Kunming to the Golden Triangle traverses Simao City in southern Yunnan and Menglian Dai, Lasu and Wa Autonomous County on the Sino-Myanmar border. Access to the Golden Triangle, the world's largest opium poppy planting area, is simple from either Mangxin or Meng'a in Menglian County.

Anti-Drug Vanguard

There are 18 ports of entry and four frontier markets on Menglian's 130-kilometer border. Two main thoroughfares link China with Myanmar, starting from Mangxin and Meng'a, the two largest of the 18 ports, which lead respectively to Myanmar's Mengbo and Bangkang (Banghsang). Menglian is an ancient trading port, and has maintained close trade ties with Myanmar and Thailand. Prosperous frontier trade and tourism makes today's Menglian a major passage for vehicles and passengers. It has also become a main thoroughfare for international drug traffickers.

Guards at Mangxin frontier checkpoint recently discovered three trafficking cases within four hours. They seized 2,262 grams of heroin, 1,865 grams of opium and captured five suspects. Yunnan's border checkpoints act as first defense against entry of hard drugs into China.

International cooperation in drug-trafficking crackdowns is becoming commonplace. Chinese police once found a morphine-processing stronghold in a Myanmese village. Acting on the principles of sharing intelligence and taking joint action, Chinese and Myanmese police cooperated closely to destroy the stronghold, capturing 12 suspects. Myanmese police also once targeted suspects on Chinese territory, and with the help of the Chinese police, captured a trafficking group of 72.

Building a Green Shield

Bustling with border trade, Meng'a is the busiest port in Menglian. It handles 26 passenger buses daily, and 150,000 people cross its checkpoint each year.

On the other side of the Nanka River from Meng'a is Bangkang, capital of the Shan State's Special Region No. 2 in Myanmar, also known as Wa State. Located in northeastern Myanmar, Wa State adjoins Yunnan's Lancang and Simao. Covering an area of 30,000 square kilometers, it has a population of 600,000, 70 percent of which is of the Wa ethnic group. When Khun Sa was defeated in 1996, the Wa became the strongest political force in the Golden Triangle.

Just two kilometers from the port of Meng'a, Bangkang looks no different from any thriving town in China. Signboards in Chinese characters name restaurants, entertainment centers and shops, and Chinese is commonly spoken. According to Lao Yang a Yunnan reporter familiar with the Golden Triangle, great changes have taken place. Previously, Bangkang consisted of more than an old street lined with dilapidated thatched huts. Bangkang’s current prosperity is the result of economic development.

Since the mid-1990s, the Wa State government has worked towards abolishing drugs by 2005. Wa State's neighbors, China's Cangyuan, Menglian, Ximeng and Lancang counties have given capital and technological support to help the area with substitute planting. Today, 10,000 mu (1 mu = 1/15 hectare) of rubber, coffee and fruit trees have been planted in Bangkang. Neighbors have also helped Wa State build transportation, energy, municipal, commercial and tourism facilities. 

The Wa government's plans to abolish drugs are multi-faceted. Opium poppy planting is a century-old tradition and difficult to ban all at once. The government has divided the region into different parts in order to phase out and eventually eradicate poppy planting. At the same time, it is developing transportation, mineral exploitation, trade circulation and substitute planting in the ongoing attempt to provide farmers with other sources of income.

In recent years, farming and forestry experts from Menglian and Lancang counties have crossed the border to help Wa farmers grow rice, rubber, fruit and other crops, using seeds and chemical fertilizers provided by China. China buys mature plants from many of them at market price. This motivates Wa farmers to switch to substitute planting as a stable source of income.

When Pino Arlacchi, executive director of the United Nations International Drug Control Program (UNIDCP) visited Yunnan several years ago, he spoke highly of Yunnan's achievements in helping Myanmar with substitute cultivation: "China's help to its neighboring countries with substitute planting was carried out independently, without UN help, and its results have exceeded my expectations." He said Yunnan's experience proved to the international community that substitute planting could succeed, and that it provided convincing support for the new global drug control strategy proposed at the Special Sessions of the UN General Assembly.

Enchanting Flowers, Mortal Danger

On the other side of Mangxin Town, things are totally different. Mangxin is a freight transport and transit thoroughfare less busy than Meng'a. Trucks come from Myanmar loaded with lumber, and  at the roadside near the checkpoint are piles of lumber..

There is a boundary marker on the roadside at frontier sentry post number 200. It is written in Chinese on one side, and Myanmese on the other. South of the marker lies the Wa mountainous county of Mengbo.

Several hundred meters beyond the boundary line is a field of white poppies in bloom. Their transparent petals are like fine gauze, their flowers big, beautiful and brilliant. This filmy tapestry is tinged with pink, purple and red flowers that sway in the wind. From a distance the field seems covered in a layer of white mist that gives no hint of the mortal danger contained within it.

The opium poppy belongs to the family papaveraceae, which has 28 genus and 250 species. Opium can only be extracted from only two of these species. One of them, the papaver somniferum, grows all over the Golden Triangle.

Half a kilometer from the opium fields is a household beneath a huge rock. Yao Yu, 64, is from the Lisu ethnic group. She used to live in Yunnan's Yinjiang and later moved to Myanmar. Yao and her husband have two sons. This family of four lives on opium cultivation.

According to Yao, seeding is done in November, and by the following February, the poppy flowers bloom, bearing dark green egg-size capsules. Harvesting time is two weeks later. A professional cutting tool consists of three or four parallel steel razor blades installed on one handle. When cut vertically, the mature capsule produces milky white liquid which when exposed to air turns into a thick brown liquid -- opium. A capsule can be cut six times, and 80 mg opium obtained. A hectare of opium poppy yields eight to 15 kilograms of opium. Farmers collecting opium often moisten the blades with their tongue and become inadvertently addicted.

Every year, Yao and her family plant, collect and sell opium, but they don't prosper. Prolonged exposure to opium has hooked Yao's husband. He has been to a drug rehabilitation center in Menglian with moderate success, but when he returned to working in the field his addiction returned, stronger than ever.

Prior to the 19th century, farmers in the Golden Triangle lived on corn planting and hunting. They were strangers to opium poppies until 1825, when British colonists entered the region and planted the first seeds. To ensure an adequate supply the British paid farmers in advance to plant poppies. The tradition has since been passed down. Farmers earn a living by opium poppies, but prices are continuously deflated. In the Wa Mountains, five kilograms of opium sells for a few thousand yuan.  

According to the UNIDCP annual report, Myanmar is the world's largest opium producer; its output makes up 50-60 percent of the world's total. UNIDCP, the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and Chinese drug researchers hold that Wa State's output constitutes 70-80 percent of the regional total and many drug analysts regard Wa State as the leading drug producer in this region. Data and public opinion direct the focus to Wa State. Statistics show that the Golden Triangle has retained 100,000 hectares of opium poppy fields in recent years. As Wa State supplies 80 percent of the region's opium, its planting area is estimated at least 80,000 hectares.

The Wa government's deadline for abolishing drugs is imminent, but poppy planting still remains the sole income source for many inhabitants of remote areas.

(China Today July 12, 2004)