Michele Ford, Michael Gillan, and Htwe Htwe Thein, “From Cronyism to Oligarchy? Privatisation and Business Elites in Myanmar,” Journal of Contemporary Asia 46, no. 1 (2016): 25.
Troop strength in Myanmar’s armed forces doubled between 1988 and 1996, from 186,000 to 370,000. Today Myanmar’s armed forces number 406,000 from a population of 55,622,506. See: Darin Christensen, Mai Nguyen and Renard Sexton, “Strategic Violence During Democratization: Evidence from Myanmar,” World Politics 71, no. 2, 2018: 7; “Myanmar Military Strength, (2021),” Global Firepower, 2021, ➝.
UN Human Rights Council, Economic Interests of the Myanmar Military: Independent International Fact-Finding Mission on Myanmar, A/HRC/42/CRP.3, August 5, 2019, 19–20; MEITI Myanmar, “Oil and Gas, Gems and Jade, Other Minerals and Pearl,” Myanmar Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative (MEITI), The Fourth Myanmar EITI Report (FY 2016–2017), March 30, 2019, 72, ➝.
This term was coined by George M. Taber, business editor of Time in the 1980s to describe the Philippine economy under President Ferdinand Marcos, which he saw as a distortion of capitalism by insider dealings and pay-offs between the Marcos family and their close friends and associates. The term became associated with oligarchy and authoritarian kleptocracy, and has since been used in a variety of situations, from Russia to Zimbabwe, where state and economic power is concentrated in the hands of elites who see self-enrichment as their primary, if not only goal. See George M. Taber, “The Night I Invented Crony Capitalism,” Knowledge@Wharton, November 3, 2015, ➝.
Lee Jones, “The Political Economy of Myanmar’s Transition,” Journal of Contemporary Asia 44, no. 1 (2014): 150.
Kevin Woods, “Ceasefire-capitalism: military-private partnerships, resource concessions and military-state building in the Burma-China borderlands,” Journal of Peasant Studies 38, no. 2 (2011): 749.
For more on this history, see James C. Scott, The Art of Not Being Governed: An Anarchist History of Upland Southeast Asia (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2009).
Thant Myint-U, Where China Meets India (London: Faber & Faber, 2011), 30.
Conglomerate is sedimentary rock made up of gravel size boulders embedded in finer sediments such as sand, silt or clay.
In geology, a dike is a sheet of rock formed in a fracture of another rock.
Jun Shan, “Importance of Jade in Chinese Culture,” ThoughtCo, December 6, 2018, ➝.
Hendrik Kloppenborg Moller, “Spectral Jade: Materiality, Conceptualisation, and Value in the Myanmar-China Jadeite Trade” (PhD diss., Lund University, 2019), 158.
S.K. Samuels, Imperial Jade of Burma and Mutton-Fat Jade of India (Tucson: SKS Enterprises, 2014), 126.
Renaud Egreteau, “The Burmese Jade Trail: Transnational Networks, China, and the (Relative) Impact of International Sanctions on Myanmar’s Gems,” in Myanmar’s Transition: Openings, Obstacles and Opportunities, eds. Nick Cheesman, Monique Skidmore, and Trevor Wilson (Singapore: ISEAS-Yusof Ishak Institute, 2012), 94.
Global Witness, Jade: Myanmar’s Big State Secret (London: Global Witness Limited, 2015), 26.
Wen-Chin Chang, Beyond Borders: Stories of Yunnanese Chinese Migrants of Burma (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2014), 218.
Paul Shortell and Emma Irwin, Governing the Gemstone Sector: Lessons from Global Experience (New York: Natural Resource Governance Institute, 2017), 8.
Edith Mirante, “A Waste of Lives: The Scramble for Jade in Myanmar’s Kachin State,” Himal Southasian, August 13, 2019, ➝.
Hla Hla Kyi, “Natural Resources and Local Community: The Case of Jade Production and Local Community in Lonekhinn-Hpakant Jade Mine Area Kachin State, Myanmar,” ICMR Journal 3, no. 2 (2015): 73.
Annual emporia have been held since 1964 by the Ministry of Natural Resource and Environmental Conservation, previously in Yangon. See: Egreteau, “The Burmese Jade Trail,” 95.
Global Witness, Jade, 35.
Kloppenborg Moller, “Spectral Jade,” 123.
Kyaw Lin Htoon, “Jade Traders call for WeChat ban,” Frontier Myanmar, November 12, 2018, ➝.
See Kloppenborg Moller, “Spectral Jade,” 54; Global Witness, Jade, 36.
Myint-U, Where China Meets India, 203.
Xiaolin Guo, “Boom on the Way from Ruili to Mandalay,” in Myanmar/Burma: Inside Challenges, Outside Interests, ed. Lex Rieffel (Washington, D.C.: Brookings Institution Press, 2010), 92.
Khin Maung Nyo, “Taking Stock of Myanmar’s Economy in 2011,” in Myanmar’s Transition: Openings, Obstacles and Opportunities, eds. Nick Cheesman, Monique Skidmore and Trevor Wilson (Singapore: ISEAS-Yusof Ishak Institute, 2012), 125.
See Thant Myint-U, The Hidden History of Burma (London: Atlantic Books, 2019), 131; Eleven Myanmar, “Property prices skyrocket due to speculation and laundering,” Consult-Myanmar, February 26, 2014, ➝.
Ford et al., “From Cronyism to Oligarchy,” 27.
Kyaw Hsu Mon, Soe Than Lynn, and Htar Htar Khin, “Sale of the Century,” Myanmar Times, March 28, 2011, ➝.
Han Oo Khin, “YGN Ruby Mart opens,” Myanmar Times, October 4, 2010, ➝.
According to the Myanmar Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative, 614 private jade permits were issued to MEHL subsidiaries in 2016–2017. MEHL recorded US$230 million in total official sales in 2013 and 2014, the second highest combined sales of any jade company during that period, and was among the ten highest value producers of jade in 2016 and 2017. See: MEITI Myanmar, “Oil and Gas, Gems and Jade, Other Minerals and Pearl,” 73.
According to official figures, the company registered pre-tax jade sales of US$27 million in 2014 and US$21 million the year before, before dropping its mining interests in 2016.
KBZ Group, “Brief Profile of KBZ Group of Companies: 2017 Strength of Myanmar.”
Aye Thidar Kyaw, “KBZ responds to Global Witness Report,” Myanmar Times, October 20, 2015, ➝.
Han Oo Khin, “Monster Jade Stone Mined in Kachin State,” Myanmar Times, February 1, 2010, ➝.
Aing Min and Toshihiro Kudo, “Business Conglomerates in Myanmar’s Economic Reform,” in Myanmar’s Integration in the Global Economy: Outlook and Opportunities, ed. Hank Lim and Yasuhiro Yamada (Bangkok: Bangkok Research Centre, 2014), 144.
Eleven Myanmar, “Tay Za Replaced as Head of Gem Association,” Consult-Myanmar, August 29, 2014, ➝.
Oxford Business Group, The Report: Myanmar 2014 (London: Oxford Business Group, 2014), 98.
China Communications Construction Company was sanctioned by the World Bank between 2009 and 2017 for fraud and corruption infractions. See: Kyaw Phyo Tha, “New Yangon City Chief Grilled Over Chinese Contractor’s Reputation,” Irrawwaddy, March 8, 2019, ➝.
Bertil Lintner, “Myanmar a perfect fit on China’s Belt and Road,” Asia Times, January 27, 2020, ➝.
Myint-U, Where China Meets India, 136.
UN Human Rights Council, Economic Interests of the Myanmar Military, 38.
Michael Sainsbury, “What Xi wants in Myanmar may not be what he gets,” Interpreter, January 16, 2010, ➝.
Fieldwork for this essay was conducted as part of Monsoon Assemblages, a research project supported by the European Research Council under the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme (Grant Agreement no. 679873). The essay is an extract from a chapter in the book Monsoon as Method, Actar, 2021.