Kokang Chinese


The Kokang Chinese are Mandarin-speaking Han Chinese living in Kokang, administered as Kokang Special Region.

Distribution

In 1997, it was estimated that the Kokang Chinese, together with more recently immigrated Chinese from Yunnanese, constituted 30 to 40 percent of Myanmar's ethnic Chinese population. They constitute around 0.1% of Myanmar's population.

History

Most Kokang are descendants of Chinese speakers who migrated to what is now Shan State in the 18th century. In the mid-17th century, the Yang clan, a Chinese military house that fled with the Ming loyalists from Nanjing to Yunnan Province, and later migrated to the Shan State in eastern Myanmar, formed a feudal state called Kokang. From the 1960s to 1989, the area was ruled by the Communist Party of Burma, and after the dissolution of that party in 1989 it became a special region of Myanmar.
The Myanmar National Democratic Alliance Army is a Kokang insurgent group. In August 2009 they clashed with Tatmadaw soldiers in a conflict fanned by controversial interests known as the 2009 Kokang incident.

Notable Kokang