In a dusty
watermelon field in Ruili, on China’s frontier, a farmer leans on his
hoe and looks south. He can hear chickens clucking in Myanmar, on the
other side of the border. He would once have been able to see the
country where he was born and where he still has family and land. Now,
though, a steel wall blocks his view. It is topped with barbed wire,
cameras and speakers, which occasionally blare out a warning for
trespassers to stay away.
Listen to this story.
Enjoy more audio and podcasts on iOS or Android.![]()
Some
5,000km (3,100 miles) long, China’s border with South-East Asia
stretches from Vietnam to Myanmar (see map). According to a census in
2020, around 8.8m people live in the areas around it on the Chinese
side. Crossing points in Ruili, Mohan and Hekou are bustling. Billions
of dollars in goods cross the border each year, most legally, some not.
Until recently, people on both sides—who are often from the same ethnic
group—could mingle and trade without much state interference.
But
over the past three years, life has changed along the border. During
the covid-19 pandemic, barriers sprang up across China. Most were
temporary, designed to keep people inside their homes, lest they spread
the virus. The border wall—which is really a collection of fences, walls
and barriers—aimed to keep covid out of the country. Parts of it were
in place before the pandemic. Now it is “pretty complete”, says Hu
Zhiding of East China Normal University in Shanghai. Today it is seen by
officials as a way to stop smuggling and other illegal activity. What
was once China’s leakiest border has become one of its tightest.
China’s
southern borderlands were once famously fractious. Locals who lived
amid the hills, forests and rivers that separate China from Myanmar,
Laos and Vietnam were masters in “the art of not being governed”, as one
historian put it. Faced with this challenge, as well as unknown
diseases and unforgiving terrain, China’s emperors never took full
control of the region. They made do with pledges of loyalty from pliable
local leaders. Where, exactly, imperial authority ended was unclear.
Still, emperors made use of the area. Disgraced officials were exiled to
the south, where they often died of malaria.
A
few boundary markers were placed in the late 19th century, after
negotiations between the weakening Qing dynasty and European colonial
officials in what was then Burma and Indochina. Locals probably ignored
them. Following the collapse of the Qing dynasty a few decades later, as
China fell into chaos, the border became even more of a fiction. In the
1940s American airmen flew across it to battle pilots from Japan, which
had invaded China. A few years after that some Kuomintang generals,
defeated by the Communist Party in China’s civil war, fled across the
frontier, eventually starting new careers as opium-trading warlords in
northern Burma.
When foreign travel was easy
It
was not until 2009 that China and Vietnam agreed on their long-disputed
land border, allowing mapmakers to draw a line between China and
South-East Asia. The reality on the ground, though, remained messy. At
China’s official entry points, passports were stamped and customs duties
collected. Guards would patrol sensitive areas. But in between them,
especially along the border with Myanmar, a multitude of unofficial
crossings were used by locals. They might hop across several times a
day, to farm their land, work in a factory or simply meet friends.
China
grew increasingly concerned. Illegal goods, such as heroin, rosewood
and human hair (for wigs), were moving across the border, too. Chinese
citizens flowed south, some to gamble in Myanmar’s casinos, others to
join gangs using telephones or the internet to con people in China out
of money. For a while, leaders in Beijing leaned on locals to report
suspicious activity along the border. In Ruili, warnings are still
painted on walls: “The cowherds are sentries, too. Those ploughing the
fields are also on duty.”
During the
pandemic these efforts took on a new urgency. The priority of local
governments was to cut off any source of infections. All foreigners and
foreign goods were suspect. Locals were asked to man remote border
stations in the forests. Big rewards were offered for catching
interlopers. In an interview with state media, one volunteer described
the “poisonous snakes” and “knife-wielding drug-smugglers” he
encountered as he guarded the frontier. “Wherever the country needs me, I
am willing to go!” he said proudly.
At
the same time, hundreds of millions of dollars were earmarked to build,
expand and fortify barriers along the border. Today the Southern Great
Wall, as some call it, cuts through fields and forests. In places it has
been dug deep enough to thwart potential tunnellers. Some sections have
cameras and motion sensors which, if triggered, will send a live video
feed to the mobile phones of nearby guards.
Local
leaders claim the wall and other efforts have greatly reduced nefarious
activity. At a press conference last June, a police official in Yunnan
province said he used the pandemic as an “opportunity” to step up
security at the border. As a result, the amount of drugs seized has
fallen by 62.4% since late 2021, he boasted. Illegal border crossings
for the purpose of fraud, gambling and smuggling have “fallen off a
cliff”, he added. His claim that over 99% of suspected criminals were
caught at the border may have dented his credibility a little. But
residents of Ruili, which is in Yunnan, agree that crossing the border
illegally has become much harder.
According
to state media, the people of Yunnan are happy with this development.
“We feel that we are secure and that the motherland is powerful!” said a
person quoted in the Yunnan Daily, a government-run newspaper.
Some inhabitants of Ruili speak approvingly of how the new controls have
diminished illegal drug use. Others compare China’s construction of its
wall with the failed attempt by Donald Trump to complete a wall along
America’s southern border with Mexico. Nationalist bloggers mock the
former president. If Mr Trump had outsourced construction to China, his
wall “would have been completed long ago”, wrote one netizen.
Propaganda
aside, many residents of Yunnan are dejected. Ruili, in particular,
suffered during the pandemic. It was subjected to some of the most
severe and extensive lockdowns in China. Over the past three years the
population shrank by more than half, to 200,000, as people fled to other
parts of the country, says a local official. Adding to the decline,
some citizens of Myanmar were forcibly repatriated. Others tried and
failed to tear down the border wall, say locals.
Now the long way is the only way
The
people who have remained in Ruili report that their lives have become
much harder. Take the watermelon farmer, who would hop across a river to
manage his land in Myanmar before the pandemic. Now he must travel 30km
east to cross the border at an official post, then 30km back to reach
his land. He has not seen his family in Myanmar since 2020.
Others
have lost their livelihoods running innocuous goods, such as cosmetics
or snacks, from one side of the border to the other. Unemployment has
increased on both sides, say locals. Goods from Myanmar now must go
through authorised channels, where officials apply customs duties.
Prices have therefore risen, say traders. One in Ruili complains that
the cost of jadeite—the rock which is cut and polished into jade
jewellery—has doubled.
Locals are
nostalgic for the days when international travel amounted to walking
across a field or through some woods. But many seem resigned to the
hardened border. “The wall is here to stay,” says a businessman in
Ruili. “At the beginning I felt strongly about it. Now I’m just numb.” ■