China–Myanmar border

Gorges and hills

In the north the line follows sharp Himalayan ridges, the watershed of the Irrawaddy. Within 75 miles the Irrawaddy, Salween, Mekong and Yangtze flow through parallel gorges, and passes are closed by snow for a third to half of the year. South of the Hpimaw pass the border crosses a dissected plateau, following ridges and rivers such as the Shweli and the Salween, and ends on the Mekong at Laos. Kachin, Lisu, Tibetan, Tai and other peoples live along the frontier.^[1]

For most of their history Burma and China left these hill peoples as a buffer. Britain and Qing China agreed the southern line, except for the Wa states, in the late 19th century, but never the northern one; China claimed all of Burma north of a line from Myitkyina to India, a region the botanist-explorer F. K. Ward called “an Any-man’s Land.”^[1]

“an Any-man’s Land”^[1]

The 1960 treaty

Talks began in 1954, and incursions by Nationalist Chinese troops who had crossed into Burma, followed by Chinese communist troops, made the problem pressing. The treaty of 1 October 1960 settled every dispute: Burma ceded 132 square miles at Hpimaw and Panglao–Panghung and gained full title to the 85-square-mile Namwan tract it had leased. It was followed by Chinese boundary treaties with Nepal, Pakistan and Afghanistan.^[1]

War on the border

In late October 2023 three ethnic armed groups, the Three Brotherhood Alliance, launched Operation 1027 against Myanmar’s military in northern Shan State. The Myanmar National Democratic Alliance Army took the Chinshwehaw crossing and, reportedly, the Yanlonkyaing gate near Laukkai, the capital of the mainly ethnic-Chinese Kokang zone, which has two official crossings on its 50 km border with China.^[3]

In January 2024, after talks in Kunming, China said it had brokered a ceasefire between the military and the alliance; Beijing was concerned about disruption to trade and refugees, and the UN said some people had fled across the border into China.^[2]