On September 7, 2004, the Lincang police uncovered a group of
armed people trafficking drugs near Xiaoletong Town, Yongde County.
Over 10 kilograms of heroin, a handgun, six bullets and a grenade
were seized. All the suspects involved in the ring were arrested
within two days, and all of them were from Banlao Village, a place
that has been dubbed Drug-trafficking Village because of the number
of people there involved in the illegal trade.
Banlao Village is located in southwest part of Yunnan
Province. It takes six hours by bus and then another four hours
on foot to get there from the Yongde County seat. But it is only 40
kilometers from Burma's Kokang Special Region, an area populated by
an ethnic group long involved in the opium trade.
Banlao lies on what was once part of the historic Silk Road to
Burma, but the route fell into disuse many long years ago and the
village became a forsaken corner. Before the founding of the
People's Republic of China, drug trafficking was the primary source
of income for the villagers. Although most of the illegal trade was
stopped after 1949, in recent years there has been a
resurgence.
According to Li Yunlong, commissar of the Public Security Bureau
in Yongde County, 85 percent of the recent drug cases involved
farmers who transport goods for overseas drug lords. About 90
people have been arrested for drug trafficking in this village with
a population of 3,000. Many were working for only a few
thousand?-- sometimes only a few hundred?-- yuan. Nearly
all the families in Banlao, says Li Yunlong, are connected in some
way with the drug trade.
Li Deren, the Communist Party branch secretary of Banlao
Village, says that the village actually comprises 14 small
settlements scattered throughout the mountainous area. Before 2002,
annual per capita net income was only 380 yuan (US$46), and the
average consumption of grain for each person was only 129.5
kilograms.
"At that time, 60 percent of the villagers didn't have enough
food to eat. Nobody knew what a car was. It is a typical
impoverished village in China," says Li Deren.
But a single drug run could bring in a few thousand yuan, a
fortune to the villagers. Desperate poverty made the risks involved
appear small.
The Ministry of Public Security reports that 10 percent of the
narcotics trafficked in China travel through Lincang City, in
Yunnan Province, and half of the drugs in Lincang come from Yongde
County. Some 85 percent of the drug traffickers apprehended in the
region in the past five years are farmers from Yongde County's
Banlao Village.
The local government realized that punishment was never going to
be an effective deterrent to people facing hunger. It began to take
steps to develop the local economy and help the villagers to escape
poverty.
Sha Kaixiang lives in Benglong, one of the under Banlao Village
settlements. There are four people in his family. Planting corn on
their 12 mu (0.8 hectare) of hilly land only earned them
400 yuan (US$48) a year. With help from the local government, they
planted sugarcane on their land last year.
"I earned over 5,000 yuan (US$604) last year planting sugarcane.
This year I believe I can earn 700 yuan for each mu," Sha
Kaixiang says. "We had a good sugarcane harvest this year. I want
to buy a TV set."
More than 70 percent of the farmers in Benglong are growing
sugarcane now, and the change has made a huge difference in
everyone's lives, says Sha. "Now, our living conditions have
improved. We have money to buy what we need, so nobody has run
drugs in the past two years."
The local government also helps the farmers to engage in side
occupations, such as raising pigs and cattle.
The Lincang city government is also actively organizing surplus
laborers to work in cities. Not long ago, 200 underemployed farmers
were sent to jobs in the south China boomtown of Shenzhen.
The recent finished Report on Drug Crimes in Western
China points out that poverty is the main cause of drug crimes
in western China. Developing the local economies is the best way to
end the illegal trade.
In 1999, the Ministry of Public Security and China National
Narcotics Control Commission listed 13 cities and counties as
target areas in the war on drugs. They include Kunming and Dali in
Yunnan Province; Guangzhou and Shenzhen in Guangdong Province;
Zhaojue in Sichuan Province; Tongxin in Ningxia Hui Autonomous
Region; Panxian County in Guizhou Province; and Dongxiang in Gansu
Province.
From 1999 through April 2004, there were 19,034 drug cases filed
in the hotlisted areas. Police have apprehended 5,866 suspects and
seized over 272 kilograms heroin and 1,113 kilograms of
methamphetamine hydrochloride, or "ice," as it is commonly
known.
(China.org.cn by Wu Nanlan, October 8, 2004)