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Journal of Academics Stand Against Poverty

Academics Stand Against Poverty

Journal of Academics Stand Against Poverty (Journal of ASAP) is an open access international multidisciplinary journal published under the ISSN 2690-3458 (electronic edition) and ISSN 2690-3431 (print edition) by Academics Stand Against Poverty, a non-profit organization based in United States (EIN # 32-0324998).  Its mission is to publish high-quality work that can make genuine contributions to understanding and eradicating poverty and its effects in the real world. Such work will address the structural causes of poverty with an eye to the special challenges poor people face in such areas as nutrition, water, shelter, health and health care, sanitation, clothing and personal care, energy, education, social and political participation and respect, physical safety, family planning, environmental degradations and hazards, working conditions in employment and at home, navigating governmental agencies and the legal system, banking and credit, travel and transportation, and communications.  Journal ASAP is committed to ensuring that perspectives of the poor are adequately represented on its pages, and that these pages are accessible to all. The journal makes substantial efforts to include voices from the global South as well as from non-elite educational institutions and from organizations, agencies and communities that are working toward poverty eradication. It also aims for the widest possible reach by being entirely open-access: its one/two issues each year are free for download anywhere in the world without any requirement to provide personal information. Journal ASAP invites submission of original work and maintains a rigorous double-blind peer review system that provides constructive feedback to assist authors in presenting their work in a way that is clear, broadly accessible and practically useful. Journal ASAP is a pure Open Access Journal and allows the author to retain the copyright in their articles. Articles are made available under a Creative Commons licence (CC-BY) to allow others to freely access, copy and use research provided the author is correctly attributed.

Journal of Academics Stand Against Poverty

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Article recordVersion of recordOpen accessVol 2 No 1August 17, 2026

China’s Role in Myanmar’s Bloody Jade Industry: Poison or Panacea

Corruption, cronyism, and jade smuggling in Myanmar’s jade industry have fueled racial and regional conflicts in northern Myanmar for decades. Myanmar's military plays an integral role in this process. They act above th…

Contributors

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  • Chia-Yun Po

    College of Law, National Taiwan University

Abstract

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Corruption, cronyism, and jade smuggling in Myanmar’s jade industry have fueled racial and regional conflicts in northern Myanmar for decades. Myanmar's military plays an integral role in this process. They act above the law and commit genocidal atrocities to maintain control over the jade industry through financial resources such as jade smuggling, crony companies' jade revenue, and bribes paid by miners, jade merchants and mining companies. Ninety percent of Myanmar's jade travels to China. Chinese culture, corruption, and capital outflows in renminbi drive demand for Myanmar’s jade. Such demand sustains the vicious cycle between jade and armed conflict in Myanmar’s jade business, aggravating human rights violations and environmental destruction in the Kachin State and Mandalay Region, jade-rich areas in Myanmar. However, current international sanctions and recommendations that aim to curtail the illicit financial flows in Myanmar’s jade business overlook the significant role the government of China can play to fundamentally remove cyclical violence from Myanmar’s jade industries. China's demand for Myanmar’s jade undermined Chinese President Xi Jinping’s 2012 “Anti-Corruption Campaign” and the policy of capital control. These political goals have caused the demand for Myanmar’s jade to plummet since 2014 and can continue suppressing demand in the future. In conclusion, to cut off the jade funds flowing to the Myanmar military, the international community needs to boycott all jade from Myanmar and jade products that are made in China but originate from Myanmar. The central government of China must continue its Anti-Corruption Campaign and capital control policy.

Keywords

MyanmarChinaJadeIllicit Financial FlowsArmed Conflict

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