Land, Citizenship, and Inequality in the Wa Self

THE ‘LUCKY’ ONES: LAND, ISSN: 2531-9744 CITIZENSHIP, AND INEQUALITY IN THE WA SELFADMINISTERED DIVISION and other SUVs parked in front of a beauty Naomi Hellmann parlor advertising Chanel. More tables and a large stage ll an enclosed, outdoor courtyard The journey from the northern Wa Hills to in front of an enormous marbled entranceway Pangkham, the capital of the Wa state (see map) with stone pillars. A crystal chandelier and ran along a winding, paved road in good sweeping staircase graced the interior of condition that lay roughly parallel to the his decadent, brightly-lit manor. A Chinese- Sino-Burmese border. The vertiginous, sparsely speaking host announced the couple on behalf populated landscape was jarring and incongruous. of the ocer, an elderly, ethnic Wa with little to Rays of sun streaming through a dense layer of no command of Chinese, and introduced ethnic mottled grey clouds illuminated a cascade of Shan, Ta’ang, and other family members. rolling green mountains shrouded in mist and wisps of fog from a passing shower. The halcyon A reception followed with bottles of imported scene was broken by the intermittent sight and Johnny Walker Black Label instead of the sound of oversize cargo trucks rumbling towards standard Chinese sorghum liquor accompanied China with heavy loads of massive timber. The by bountiful platters of food. Dozens of United verdant slopes were covered in unending rows of Wa State Army (UWSA) soldiers with guns strap- evenly spaced rubber trees as far as the eye could ped to their waists served dishes, cleaned up, see like scores of soldiers lined up for a military and guarded presents. Guests wore brilliant march. jewelry with multiple carats of diamonds and precious and semi-precious stones. Families Outside the house of a top military ocer, a main owned mining concessions, large tracts of street had been closed o for his son’s wedding, agricultural land, and processing factories. They an elaborate six-day aair. Two long rows of enjoyed the benets of dual and even multiple tables with hundreds of chairs sat opposite Lexus national citizenships, study abroad, and the 1 I use ‘Wa state’ in lieu of Wa Self-Administered Division or Special Region 2 because it is the name most commonly used in the region. It is not intended as a political statement. A view of a rubber concession in the Wa state. Source: Naomi Hellmann labor of children and servants. On the second “natives” with the “means and ability” – oor, business was made over the steady clicks long-term, trusted social, political, and economic and intermittent sweeps of Mahjong tiles and the relationships, connections to people in positions hum of hushed voices. Bets were placed for of authority and control, and enough money – hundreds and thousands of USD or perhaps could claim property. Despite inconsistencies and more. ambiguities in the local vernacular of land use, it was clear that villagers lacked formal The life of the local elite lay in stark contrast to the ownership rights. Moreover, according to wealthy entrenched poverty in the northern Wa Hills. proprietors and business owners, households Rural localities connected to distant town centers subordinated to the area’s industrial crop along narrow, deeply rutted dirt roads, perhaps economy were the “lucky” ones on the argument only half of which were even accessible by a that conditions for them were better than for robust, all-terrain vehicle during the dry season. those living in remote areas without access to any Village settlements comprising about 10 to 50 opportunity. households dotted the upper ridges of isolated hillsides. Homes were constructed out of woven While conducting eldwork in the Wa autonomous bamboo and straw roofs, which were susceptible areas that run along the Sino-Myanmar border, to damage from strong winds and heavy rain. On people often singled out the obvious disparities in the surrounding slopes, land was used as a means material wealth between the rich and poor. Even for subsistence for every aspect of survival from the upper echelons of local society described swidden or shifting cultivation agriculture to the Wa state as a “golden pyramid” with the gathering fuel, collecting top one percent enjoying water, and other less visible Location map, showing Wa administrative areas in portions of access to remarkable privile- Yunnan Province, China and the Shan State, Myanmar; boxed in is activity. Basic needs, inclu- the study area. Scale approximate. ges and luxuries while the ding access to schools and rest of the population bore teachers were entirely the human consequences unmet. Villagers were often of living in poverty. This illiterate and spoke only the picture of inequality is similar local Wa language. Even to the one that emerged bare essentials like food and from the 2014 population clothing were insucient. census in which 94% of the Without healthcare, they population lives in rural areas faced a host of eradicable excluded from access to land diseases and other medical or resources. Not without problems from polio to cleft coincidence, 94% of the lip and palate. population also lacks national registration cards. This In the northern Wa Hills, a means that not only are landholder with around 300 they bound to the land by hectares of rubber, dual their relative disadvantage, national citizenship, and but also by their spatial family who had allegedly immobility. made hundreds of thousands of USD had a new agricultural concession on property that had Yet, there remained an underlying Lockean been sanctioned at no cost by the Wa land mindset – not least among the leadership – that authorities in the interest of economic develop- “natives”, who are “lazy”, “backward”, and ment. Under China’s crop-substitution scheme, a “incapable” could somehow be expropriated. In cousin from across the border had provided describing factors inuencing development nancial, technical, and other essential resources outcomes on the two sides of the border despite while he had obligated land and labor. Walking the area’s geographic and cultural anities, a Wa alongside plants sown by villagers, he explained ocial explained China had “provisions” the Wa how the Wa state had many impoverished people state didn’t have: “the sun is dierent there than it living on a vast expanse of “empty land”. Therefore, is here.” outside investors were needed to “develop” the land in order for the poor to prosper. Naomi Hellmann is a Doctoral Fellow at the Max Planck Institute for the Study of Theoretically, land belonged to anyone “native”, Religious and Ethnic Diversity. an amorphous entity that included autochthonous populations and those who had arrived in the 1940s eeing Japanese forces in the Kokang, but not those who had moved to the area from China to support the Communist Party of Burma or RISE is T.wai's quarterly focused on more recent settlers. In practice, however, only RISE current Southeast Asian aairs; the only Italian journal entirely devoted to the region. T.note n. 40 August 2017 (RISE series #6).

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