Echoes from the Sino-Burmese Borderlands
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A01=Wen-Chin Chang
Author_Wen-Chin Chang
border adaptation
border crossing
border economy
border networks
border politics
border violence
borderland communities
burmese politics
C. Patterson Giersch Asian Borderlands
Category=JBFH
Category=JHMC
Category=NHTW
Category=NK
China-Burma-Taiwan
chinese diaspora
chinese migration
clandestine migration
Cold War
cold war asia
cold war borders
communist party of burma
cross-border trade
cultural adaptation
David Ludden Where Is Assam?
eq_bestseller
eq_history
eq_isMigrated=1
eq_isMigrated=2
eq_new_release
eq_nobargain
eq_non-fiction
eq_society-politics
espionage
ethnic diversity
ethnic groups
ethnic identity
ethnic relations
existential anthropology
frontier life
illegal migration
illicit trade
James Scott The Art of Not Being Governed
Mandy Sadan Being and Becoming Kachin
migrant resilience
migration histories
military operations
mule transport
myanmar history
Overland Chinese migrants
personal histories
political entities
political instability
political liminality
sino-burmese border
Sino-Burmese borderlands
smuggling
southeast asian borders
survival strategies
Taiwan's espionage in Burma
taiwanese espionage
Tharaphi Than Women in Modern Burma
transnational communities
underground cross-border trade
Willem van Schendel The Bengal Borderland
yunnanese chinese
Product details
- ISBN 9780674302549
- Dimensions: 152 x 229mm
- Publication Date: 09 Dec 2025
- Publisher: Harvard University Press
- Publication City/Country: US
- Product Form: Hardback
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Grounded in extensive fieldwork and archival research, Echoes from the Sino-Burmese Borderlands is an ethnography that explores the clandestine travel of primarily Yunnanese Chinese migrants via the Sino-Burmese borderlands during the Cold War. Wen-Chin Chang probes their political, economic, and sociocultural trajectories, including their engagement in Taiwan’s espionage in Burma, military operations of the Communist Party of Burma, mule transport for the Burmese authorities, underground cross-border trade, and pursuit of a Chinese education. Through the lens of existential anthropology, Chang illustrates how these migrants’ lived experiences intersected with the volatile situation in the frontier areas where many ethnic groups and political entities co-existed. Although subjected to state and non-state violence, these individuals demonstrated their resilience, political liminality, economic adroitness, and skillfulness in networking as they moved across borders in search of a better life. In contrast to conventional historical narratives often focused on global politics and ideological confrontations, Chang’s examination of these migrants’ overlooked stories offers a compelling and nuanced Cold War history of the Sino-Burmese borderlands, where exclusion pushed people to seek out change and adversity was met with creative adaptation.
Wen-Chin Chang is a Research Fellow at the Center for Asia-Pacific Area Studies, RCHSS, at Academia Sinica in Taiwan.
