Jade traders in Myanmar are running from junta troops and dodging rebel attacks to sell dwindling volumes of the green gemstone, as the billion-dollar industry loses its shine months on from the coup.
The Southeast Asian country has been mired in chaos since the February putsch, with the military trying to crush widespread democracy protests and the economy in crisis.
Fighting around the Hpakant jade mine in northern Kachin State — the largest in the world — has squeezed digging already hampered by the COVID-19 pandemic, cutting supplies of one of the country’s most lucrative exports.
Photo: AFP
Myanmar is the world’s biggest source of jade, with the industry largely driven by insatiable demand for the translucent gem from neighboring China.
Most stones pass through the second city of Mandalay, home to the 23m high Kyauksein Pagoda, a Buddhist shrine built using thousands of kilograms of the precious stone.
Now the complex is quiet, with just a handful of worshippers praying at its gleaming turquoise and red dome.
“Business is not good at all,” said one jade trader, who spent months trying to sell his stones on Mandalay’s roadsides as the pandemic and unrest closed its main jade market.
“Sometimes, people panic when soldiers come patrolling, and they run... If one person runs, others start running. Then soldiers fire warning shots to control the situation,” the trader said.
‘LIVES IN DANGER’
Two days later the market reopened and authorities began collecting fees again — one of the many levied on the gem that finance both sides of a decades-long civil war between armed ethnic groups and the military.
It is “nearly impossible” to purchase Myanmar jade without providing money to the military and its allies, watchdog Global Witness says.
With widespread and often violent resistance against the generals — who regularly appear in public sporting rings set with high-quality jade — working with the stone has taken on a new danger.
“If you continue doing your trading business... We strongly warn that your lives are in danger,” read one notice posted by Generation Z Power, a local dissident group, days before the market reopened.
A bomb exploded near the market a week after the traders returned, and while there were no casualties, the same group promised to set off more if people continue trading there.
Despite the threats, the market is regaining some of its former bustle. Sitting at a small camp table examining a fist-sized rock with a flashlight, one man talks into a smartphone in Mandarin.
Beijing has shuttered its border with Myanmar because of the pandemic and sporadic fighting along the frontier, but demand is still huge — and Chinese buyers are using the unrest to drive a hard bargain.
“Because of COVID and the political situation, they are giving very low price, but we have no choice,” said a 62-year-old dealer who did not want to give his name.
FEAR OF NEXT BLAST
“We need them for the market. If they do not buy or if we do not sell, we have no place to rely on for this business,” he added.
“The price is going down,” said Myo Min Zaw, who also spent his months outside the market traipsing around hotels frequented by Chinese buyers in search of a sale. “A stone worth 10 lakh [US$550] only sells for around 5 lakh nowadays.”
Before the coup, 70 to 90 percent of all jade mined in Hpakant was smuggled to China without ever entering the formal system in Myanmar, says.
Since the putsch, and with fighting flaring around the mines, figures from the shadowy world are even harder to come by, said Hanna Hindstrom, senior campaigner for Myanmar at Global Witness.
“We’ve heard that prices in China have risen as demand is high and supply reduced,” she said — increasing competition between the rebel groups and military-aligned militia who stock the emporiums with high-quality jade.
For Thandar, who runs a small jade bead workshop across the river from Mandalay, selling her modest wares to local customers has just got more dangerous.
“We worry if we have to go to the market,” she said. “We all are afraid of when the blast will come... We cannot avoid going there because of our living.”
A second blast hit the market on Thursday, killing a police officer, local media reported, and sending traders fleeing.
The same day authorities announced that any shop in the complex that failed to reopen by Friday would be “temporarily seized.”
“We are stuck in the middle,” said Aung Aung, using a pseudonym. “The market said they will take the shops if owners do not open. [The Burmese] People’s Defence [Force has] asked us not to do business in the market.”
Zhang Yazhou was sitting in the passenger seat of her Tesla Model 3 when she said she heard her father’s panicked voice: The brakes do not work. Approaching a red light, her father swerved around two cars before plowing into a sport utility vehicle and a sedan, and crashing into a large concrete barrier. Stunned, Zhang gazed at the deflating airbag in front of her. She could never have imagined what was to come: Tesla Inc sued her for defamation for complaining publicly about the vehicles brakes — and won. A Chinese court ordered Zhang to pay more than US$23,000 in
Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) yesterday said that its investment plan in Arizona is going according to schedule, following a local media report claiming that the company is planning to break ground on its third wafer fab in the US in June. In a statement, TSMC said it does not comment on market speculation, but that its investments in Arizona are proceeding well. TSMC is investing more than US$65 billion in Arizona to build three advanced wafer fabs. The first one has started production using the 4-nanometer (nm) process, while the second one would start mass production using the
A TAIWAN DEAL: TSMC is in early talks to fully operate Intel’s US semiconductor factories in a deal first raised by Trump officials, but Intel’s interest is uncertain Broadcom Inc has had informal talks with its advisers about making a bid for Intel Corp’s chip-design and marketing business, the Wall Street Journal reported, citing people familiar with the matter. Nothing has been submitted to Intel and Broadcom could decide not to pursue a deal, according to the Journal. Bloomberg News earlier reported that Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) is in early talks for a controlling stake in Intel’s factories at the request of officials at US President Donald Trump’s administration, as the president looks to boost US manufacturing and maintain the country’s leadership in critical technologies. Trump officials raised the
From George Clooney to LeBron James, celebrities in the US have cashed in on tequila’s soaring popularity, but in Mexico, producers of the agave plant used to make the country’s most famous liquor are nursing a nasty hangover. Instead of bringing a long period of prosperity for farmers of the spiky succulent, the tequila boom has created a supply glut that sent agave prices slumping. Mexican tequila exports surged from 224 million liters in 2018 to a record 402 million last year, according to the Tequila Regulatory Council, which oversees qualification for the internationally recognized denomination of origin label. The US, Germany, Spain,
RSS