Kokang

Kokang (ကိုးကန့်; ) is a region in Myanmar (Burma). It is located in the northern part of Shan State, with the Salween River to its west, and sharing a border with China's Yunnan Province to the east. Its total land area is around . The capital is Laukkai. Kokang is mostly populated by Kokang Chinese, a Han Chinese group living in Myanmar. Kokang had been historically part of China for several centuries and is still claimed by the Republic of China to this day, but was largely left alone by successive governments due to its remote location. The region formed a de facto buffer zone between Yunnan province and the Shan States. The Yang clan, originally Ming loyalists from Nanjing, consolidated the area into a single polity. In 1840, the Yunnan governor granted the Yang clan the hereditary rights as a vassal of the Qing dynasty. After the British conquest of Upper Burma in 1885, Kokang was initially placed in China under the 1894 Sino-British boundary convention. It was ceded to British Burma in a supplementary agreement signed in February 1897. From the 1960s to 1989, the area was controlled by the Communist Party of Burma, and after the party's armed wing disbanded in 1989 it became a special region of Myanmar under the control of the Myanmar Nationalities Democratic Alliance Army (MNDAA). Armed conflicts between the MNDAA and the Tatmadaw have resulted in the 2009 Kokang incident and the 2015 Kokang offensive. The name Kokang derives from the Burmese ကိုးကန့်, which itself derives from the Shan ၵဝ်ႈ (kāo, "nine") + ၵူၼ်း (kúun, "family") or ၵၢင် (kǎang, "guard"). In 2009, the population was reported to be around 150,000. Of these, around 100,000 people held Burmese nationality, the remainder being from China. Of the Burmese nationality, 90% are ethnic Han-Chinese, with others being Shan, Palaung, Hmong, Wa, Lisu, Bai and Bamar. The large majority of ethnic Burmans are those dispatched to the region by the central government as military and administrative personnel and their families, primary school teachers, skilled workers, medical workers and other public service personnel.