Ko-lin Chin and Sheldon X. Zhang
- Published in print:
- 2015
- Published Online:
- March 2016
- ISBN:
- 9781479895403
- eISBN:
- 9781479832514
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- NYU Press
- DOI:
- 10.18574/nyu/9781479895403.001.0001
- Subject:
- Sociology, Law, Crime and Deviance
In a country long associated with the trade in opiates, the Chinese government has for decades applied extreme measures to curtail the spread of illicit drugs, only to find that the problem has ...
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In a country long associated with the trade in opiates, the Chinese government has for decades applied extreme measures to curtail the spread of illicit drugs, only to find that the problem has worsened. Burma is blamed as the major producer of illicit drugs and conduit for the entry of drugs into China. Which organizations are behind the heroin trade? What problems and prospects of drug control in the so-called “Golden Triangle” drug-trafficking region are faced by Chinese and Southeast Asian authorities? This book examines the social organization of the trafficking of heroin from the Golden Triangle to China and the wholesale and retail distribution of the drug in China. Based on face-to-face interviews with hundreds of incarcerated drug traffickers, street-level drug dealers, users, and authorities, paired with extensive fieldwork in the border areas of Burma and China and several major urban centers in China and Southeast Asia, the book reveals how the drug trade has evolved in the Golden Triangle since the late 1980s. It also explores the marked characteristics of heroin traffickers; the relationship between drug use and sales in China; and how China compares to other international drug markets.Less
In a country long associated with the trade in opiates, the Chinese government has for decades applied extreme measures to curtail the spread of illicit drugs, only to find that the problem has worsened. Burma is blamed as the major producer of illicit drugs and conduit for the entry of drugs into China. Which organizations are behind the heroin trade? What problems and prospects of drug control in the so-called “Golden Triangle” drug-trafficking region are faced by Chinese and Southeast Asian authorities? This book examines the social organization of the trafficking of heroin from the Golden Triangle to China and the wholesale and retail distribution of the drug in China. Based on face-to-face interviews with hundreds of incarcerated drug traffickers, street-level drug dealers, users, and authorities, paired with extensive fieldwork in the border areas of Burma and China and several major urban centers in China and Southeast Asia, the book reveals how the drug trade has evolved in the Golden Triangle since the late 1980s. It also explores the marked characteristics of heroin traffickers; the relationship between drug use and sales in China; and how China compares to other international drug markets.
Ko-lin Chin
- Published in print:
- 2015
- Published Online:
- March 2016
- ISBN:
- 9781479895403
- eISBN:
- 9781479832514
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- NYU Press
- DOI:
- 10.18574/nyu/9781479895403.003.0001
- Subject:
- Sociology, Law, Crime and Deviance
This chapter opens with a description of the Golden Triangle, one of the world’s major opium-cultivation and heroin-producing areas, covering a 150,000-square-mile, mountainous area located where the ...
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This chapter opens with a description of the Golden Triangle, one of the world’s major opium-cultivation and heroin-producing areas, covering a 150,000-square-mile, mountainous area located where the borders of Burma (or Myanmar), Laos, and Thailand meet. It goes on to describe China’s booming drug trafficking business. It then sets out the main theoretical interest of this study, which was geared mostly toward understanding how individuals find one another in their social networks to gain entry into the drug trade, manage law enforcement risks and logistical obstacles inherent in the business, and collectively and individually move toward the common goal of making money. The remainder of the chapter discusses the research methods applied in the study, the limitations of the study, and the generalizability of study findings.Less
This chapter opens with a description of the Golden Triangle, one of the world’s major opium-cultivation and heroin-producing areas, covering a 150,000-square-mile, mountainous area located where the borders of Burma (or Myanmar), Laos, and Thailand meet. It goes on to describe China’s booming drug trafficking business. It then sets out the main theoretical interest of this study, which was geared mostly toward understanding how individuals find one another in their social networks to gain entry into the drug trade, manage law enforcement risks and logistical obstacles inherent in the business, and collectively and individually move toward the common goal of making money. The remainder of the chapter discusses the research methods applied in the study, the limitations of the study, and the generalizability of study findings.
Kenton Clymer
- Published in print:
- 2015
- Published Online:
- August 2016
- ISBN:
- 9780801454486
- eISBN:
- 9781501701023
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Cornell University Press
- DOI:
- 10.7591/cornell/9780801454486.003.0013
- Subject:
- History, Asian History
This chapter focuses on the issue of narcotics control. Cheap narcotics began to reach American troops in Vietnam; American cities were overwhelmed with a flood of drugs; and President Nixon declared ...
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This chapter focuses on the issue of narcotics control. Cheap narcotics began to reach American troops in Vietnam; American cities were overwhelmed with a flood of drugs; and President Nixon declared his War on Drugs in 1971. The drugs were coming from the Golden Triangle, a region that encompassed parts of Burma, Laos, and Thailand. Control of narcotics thus became the major American policy concern in Burma, and remained until the Burmese revolution of 1988. The United States provided modest assistance programs and continued its support of Burma's antinarcotics program. However, the antinarcotics program was controversial. The newly founded human rights organization, Project Maje, and its activist leader, Edith T. Mirante, conducted a protest against the use of herbicides in Burma, claiming that the chemicals were being used to wage a campaign of chemical terror against the Shans and other minorities.Less
This chapter focuses on the issue of narcotics control. Cheap narcotics began to reach American troops in Vietnam; American cities were overwhelmed with a flood of drugs; and President Nixon declared his War on Drugs in 1971. The drugs were coming from the Golden Triangle, a region that encompassed parts of Burma, Laos, and Thailand. Control of narcotics thus became the major American policy concern in Burma, and remained until the Burmese revolution of 1988. The United States provided modest assistance programs and continued its support of Burma's antinarcotics program. However, the antinarcotics program was controversial. The newly founded human rights organization, Project Maje, and its activist leader, Edith T. Mirante, conducted a protest against the use of herbicides in Burma, claiming that the chemicals were being used to wage a campaign of chemical terror against the Shans and other minorities.
Jefferson Fox
- Published in print:
- 2014
- Published Online:
- September 2014
- ISBN:
- 9780226322667
- eISBN:
- 9780226024134
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of Chicago Press
- DOI:
- 10.7208/chicago/9780226024134.003.0022
- Subject:
- Biology, Biodiversity / Conservation Biology
In the former opium-growing region of the Golden Triangle a road inaugurated in April 2008 that cuts directly through the formerly isolated high mountain areas of the region is bound to change the ...
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In the former opium-growing region of the Golden Triangle a road inaugurated in April 2008 that cuts directly through the formerly isolated high mountain areas of the region is bound to change the social, economic and environmental fabric of the region forever. It is also is the site of competing development regimes. Shifting cultivation in the region shaped the landscape, land cover, and land use across this transect in similar ways up through the end of World War II, and most of the corridor's inhabitants were identified as ethnic “minorities.” Over the past five decades, however, these countries have been under vastly different economic and political regimes influencing land use and land cover in the region today. This chapter examines narratives and policy frameworks from Xishuangbanna Prefecture, the most southern prefecture in Yunnan Province, Northern Laos, and Northern Thailand on how different issues ranging from forest classification, opium eradication, stabilizing shifting cultivators, to promoting trade, and developing infrastructure and markets affected land use and land cover in different ways in each of the three countries where varying policy approaches to land use tenurial regimes and regional projects have profoundly affected the vegetational/institutional structures in a significant biodiversity hotspot.Less
In the former opium-growing region of the Golden Triangle a road inaugurated in April 2008 that cuts directly through the formerly isolated high mountain areas of the region is bound to change the social, economic and environmental fabric of the region forever. It is also is the site of competing development regimes. Shifting cultivation in the region shaped the landscape, land cover, and land use across this transect in similar ways up through the end of World War II, and most of the corridor's inhabitants were identified as ethnic “minorities.” Over the past five decades, however, these countries have been under vastly different economic and political regimes influencing land use and land cover in the region today. This chapter examines narratives and policy frameworks from Xishuangbanna Prefecture, the most southern prefecture in Yunnan Province, Northern Laos, and Northern Thailand on how different issues ranging from forest classification, opium eradication, stabilizing shifting cultivators, to promoting trade, and developing infrastructure and markets affected land use and land cover in different ways in each of the three countries where varying policy approaches to land use tenurial regimes and regional projects have profoundly affected the vegetational/institutional structures in a significant biodiversity hotspot.
Nicholas K. Menzies
- Published in print:
- 2014
- Published Online:
- September 2014
- ISBN:
- 9780226322667
- eISBN:
- 9780226024134
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of Chicago Press
- DOI:
- 10.7208/chicago/9780226024134.003.0021
- Subject:
- Biology, Biodiversity / Conservation Biology
The region including China's Yunnan Province, northern Laos, and northern Thailand, best known as the Golden Triangle, has been globalized for a long time. This chapter focuses on constructing ...
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The region including China's Yunnan Province, northern Laos, and northern Thailand, best known as the Golden Triangle, has been globalized for a long time. This chapter focuses on constructing narratives of the different actors in one sector's rural economy—tea cultivation and processing—to examine how they are making decisions to securing and improve their livelihoods in response to the changing economic, political, and social dynamics of globalization. Although “official landscapes” comprise extensive tracts of intensively cultivated monocultures of tea, significant areas have a diverse patchwork of crops, including gardens of old, scattered tea trees grown for generations, primarily by ethnic minority communities. As demand for rare teas has soared, “forest tea” growers are challenging established categories of modern” and “advanced” in the discourse of development in China, showing themselves to be far more attuned to the subtleties of global marketing than official planners and development agencies. Entry into the world market has transformed “backward minorities” of the Six Ancient Tree Mountains into entrepreneurs defining the cutting edge of green marketing. This chapter explores how a land use formerly ignored or dismissed as backward has been recast as a sustainable, indigenous technology for the production of a marketable niche product.Less
The region including China's Yunnan Province, northern Laos, and northern Thailand, best known as the Golden Triangle, has been globalized for a long time. This chapter focuses on constructing narratives of the different actors in one sector's rural economy—tea cultivation and processing—to examine how they are making decisions to securing and improve their livelihoods in response to the changing economic, political, and social dynamics of globalization. Although “official landscapes” comprise extensive tracts of intensively cultivated monocultures of tea, significant areas have a diverse patchwork of crops, including gardens of old, scattered tea trees grown for generations, primarily by ethnic minority communities. As demand for rare teas has soared, “forest tea” growers are challenging established categories of modern” and “advanced” in the discourse of development in China, showing themselves to be far more attuned to the subtleties of global marketing than official planners and development agencies. Entry into the world market has transformed “backward minorities” of the Six Ancient Tree Mountains into entrepreneurs defining the cutting edge of green marketing. This chapter explores how a land use formerly ignored or dismissed as backward has been recast as a sustainable, indigenous technology for the production of a marketable niche product.
Kirk A. Denton
- Published in print:
- 2013
- Published Online:
- November 2016
- ISBN:
- 9780824836870
- eISBN:
- 9780824869748
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of Hawai'i Press
- DOI:
- 10.21313/hawaii/9780824836870.003.0011
- Subject:
- Society and Culture, Asian Studies
This chapter examines the intentions and expectations motivating the state's promotion of red tourism and speculates on the degree to which red tourists come to accept these intentions and ...
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This chapter examines the intentions and expectations motivating the state's promotion of red tourism and speculates on the degree to which red tourists come to accept these intentions and expectations. It first offers some background on the history of revolutionary tourism and the more recent state promotion of red tourism. It then looks at three sites, all key destinations in the revolutionary tourism circuit: Jinggangshan, the Hunan “Golden Triangle,” and Xibaipo. It hones in on some of the particular historical resonances and unique character of red tourism at each site. Through these examples, the chapter attempts to highlight the more important dimensions of red tourism on a national scale and their implications for the politics of historical memory in postsocialist China.Less
This chapter examines the intentions and expectations motivating the state's promotion of red tourism and speculates on the degree to which red tourists come to accept these intentions and expectations. It first offers some background on the history of revolutionary tourism and the more recent state promotion of red tourism. It then looks at three sites, all key destinations in the revolutionary tourism circuit: Jinggangshan, the Hunan “Golden Triangle,” and Xibaipo. It hones in on some of the particular historical resonances and unique character of red tourism at each site. Through these examples, the chapter attempts to highlight the more important dimensions of red tourism on a national scale and their implications for the politics of historical memory in postsocialist China.
