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The Kokang people (Chinese: 果敢族; pinyin: Guǒgǎn Zú; Burmese: ကိုးကန့်လူမျိုး) are an ethnic group of Burma (also known as Myanmar). They are Mandarin-speaking Han Chinese living in Kokang, administered as Kokang Special Region (now Kokang Self-Administered Zone).
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Distribution
In 1997, it was estimated that the Kokang people, together with more recently immigrated Yunnanese, constituted 30–40 percent of Burma's ethnic Chinese population.
History
Most Kokang are descendants of Chinese speakers who migrated to what is now Shan State in the 18th century. In the mid-17th century, the Yang clan, a Chinese military house that fled with the Ming loyalists from Nanjing to Yunnan Province, and later migrated to the Shan State in eastern Burma, formed a feudal state called Kokang. From the 1960s to 1989, the area was ruled by the Communist Party of Burma, and after the dissolution of that party in 1989 it became a special region of Burma.
The group has an army called the Myanmar National Democratic Alliance Army (MNDAA); in August 2009 they clashed with Tatmadaw (Burmese military junta) troops in a conflict fanned by controversial interests known as the 2009 Kokang incident.