Palaung people
Mon-Khmer ethnic group
The Palaung (Burmese: ပလောင်လူမျိုး [pəlàʊɰ̃ lùmjó]; Thai: ปะหล่อง; Chinese: 崩龍族, romanized: Bēnglóng Zú), Palong, or Ta'ang (Burmese: တအာင်း; Chinese: 德昂族, romanized: Dé'áng Zú) are one of the ancient Austroasiatic ethnic groups found in Shan State of Myanmar, Yunnan Province of China and Northern Thailand. In China, they are referred to as the De'ang people. The majority of population lives mainly in the northern parts of northern Shan State in the Pa Laung Self-Administered Zone, with the capital at Namhsan.
The Ta'ang (Palaung) State Liberation Army, the armed wing of the Palaung ethnic group, began fighting against the Burmese military in 1963. It entered a cease-fire agreement with the central government in April 1991, but is currently continuing the insurgency as part of the larger nationwide rebellion against the Tatmadaw junta in the Myanmar Civil War. The insurgency has become intense after TNLA actively involving in Operation 1027 which is a military offensive allied with many other revolutionary rebel forces in the country, against the Myanmar's ruling military junta. The Myanmar military is believed to have derived benefit from poppy cultivation, which has caused serious drug addiction among the local people in Palaung region.
Groups
There are three main subgroups of Palaung: the Palé, Shwe and Rumai.
The Palé, Riang, Rumai and Shwe peoples are grouped together as the De'ang ethnic nationality. The group also includes the Danau (Danaw) who may no longer have a separate identity from the Palé.
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Named sources, stable identifiers and responsible institutions provide the strongest route from overview to verifiable evidence. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 17, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q878275. The Library of Congress control number is sh85096984. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1963, 1991 and 1027.
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This entry incorporates text from “Palaung people” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.