BEIJING — Beijing has called on neighboring Myanmar to end combat operations in a border area after at least 10,000 people fled into China in recent days.
China hopes Myanmar can “properly deal with its domestic issue to safeguard the regional stability in the China-Myanmar border area,” Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Jiang Yu said in a statement posted on the ministry’s Web site.
Jiang also demanded Myanmar ensure the safety and legal rights of Chinese citizens in that country, adding that Beijing has also conveyed its concerns through diplomatic channels.
The statement is rare for China and could indicate growing concern in Beijing that the fighting between Myanmar’s military and ethnic militias might spill across the border into its southwestern province of Yunnan.
Beijing maintains close ties with Myanmar’s ruling military junta and usually takes care to not entangle itself in the regime’s affairs.
Militants who have long fought for autonomy for Myanmar’s Kokang minority attacked a police post along the border with China near the town of Laogai on Thursday, according to the U.S. Campaign for Burma. The Washington-based lobbying group said several police officers were killed.
Myanmar’s military rulers and the state-controlled press made no comment on the situation at the border.
People were still crossing from Myanmar’s Kokang region late today, and Chinese authorities were housing them at seven separate locations along the border, the Yunnan provincial government said in a brief statement faxed to media. It said about 10,000 people had crossed the border but did not say how many had been placed at the government shelters.
Chinese authorities were providing medical services and taking measures to prevent disease, the statement said.
A spokesman for the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees in Geneva said the group had received reports that between 10,000 and 30,000 refugees have fled in recent weeks from Myanmar into China.
“Our information is that as many as 30,000 people may have taken shelter in Nansan County since Aug. 8, saying they were fleeing fighting between Myanmar government troops and ethnic minority groups,” said UNHCR spokesman Andrej Mahecic. “We have been informed that local authorities in Yunnan Province have already provided emergency shelter, food and medical care to the refugees.
An aid worker and a factory manager in the Chinese town of Nansan said they could hear guns and artillery being fired over the border, some 150 feet away, throughout the day.
Myanmar’s central government has rarely exerted control in Kokang — a mostly ethnic Chinese region in the northern Shan state — and essentially ceded control to a local militia after signing a cease-fire with them two decades ago. The region is one of several areas along Myanmar’s borders where minority militias are seeking autonomy from the central government.
But tensions between the government and the Kokang people have been rising in recent months, as the junta tries to consolidate its control of the country and ensure stability ahead of national elections next year — the first since the opposition National League for Democracy won by a landslide in 1990, a result the military ignored.
The crisis has turned a spotlight on China’s friendly ties with Myanmar’s authoritarian rulers. Beijing has consistently offered the military regime diplomatic support based on its avowed policy of nonintervention while China’s border trade and oil and gas deals have thrown an economic lifeline to the generals.
As the refugees poured in from Myanmar, Chinese authorities in Nansan housed them in unfinished buildings, some still with no windows, said the local factory manager, who would only give his surname, Li.
A worker with an international medical charity, who asked not to be named for fear of reprisals from the local government, said local authorities were caring for about 4,000 refugees. Several thousand more were staying in hotels or with friends and family on the Chinese side, he said.
Tensions in Kokang rose earlier this month after militia leaders refused to allow their guerrillas to be incorporated into a border guard force under Myanmar army command.
Soldiers raided the home of militia leader Peng Jiashen on Aug. 8, and Peng’s forces began mobilizing. Peng’s troops were forced out of Laogai on Tuesday by government soldiers and a breakaway Kokang faction seeking to overthrow Peng.
Kokang lies 1,400 miles southwest of Beijing and is surrounded by lush mountains in a region notorious for the production and use of heroin and methamphetamines, cross-border smuggling, gambling and prostitution.
The region’s links to China date back to the collapse of the Ming dynasty 350 years ago, when loyalists fled across the mountains into present-day Myanmar to escape Manchu invaders.
In recent years, the area has attracted a flood of businessmen from China who have opened hotels, restaurants and shops selling motorcycles, electronics and other imports that are either pricey or unavailable in other parts of the country.
Wary of the consequences of renewed conflict, many of those investors fled back across the border this month, according to Chinese reports.
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