Kokang

Kokang (Burmese: ကိုးကန့်; Chinese: 果敢; pinyin: Guǒgǎn; Wade–Giles: Kuo-kan) is a region in northern Myanmar, located in the northern part of Shan State with the Salween River to its west and a border with China's Yunnan Province to the east. Its total land area is around 1,895 square kilometers (732 sq mi), and its capital is Laukkai. Kokang is mostly populated by the Kokang people, an ethnic Han Chinese group with a centuries-long history of settlement in the area.

Although it lies within Myanmar, Kokang has close historical, linguistic and economic ties to China, and the surrounding territory was for several centuries a tributary chiefdom under varying degrees of Chinese suzerainty. After the British conquest of Upper Burma in 1885, Kokang was initially placed on the Chinese side of the border under the 1894 Sino-British boundary convention, before being formally ceded to British Burma in a supplementary agreement signed in February 1897.

From the 1960s until 1989, the area was controlled by the Communist Party of Burma. Following the collapse of the party's armed wing in 1989, Kokang became a special region of Myanmar under the control of the Myanmar National Democratic Alliance Army (MNDAA). Recurring armed conflict between the MNDAA and the Myanmar military, the Tatmadaw, has produced the 2009 Kokang incident, the 2015 Kokang offensive, and the 2023–2024 capture of Laukkai during Operation 1027. The MNDAA refers to the territory it controls as the "People's Government of Kokang".

Etymology

The origin of the name Kokang is disputed.