The Smuggling of the Royal Gemstone

Myanmar, is one of the world's largest Jade producers - but with trade bound by international sanctions, many of the precious gemstones are smuggled out of the country.

Estimates place the value of Myanmar's jade trade at more than $8bn (£4.7bn) a year. Most of the jade goes to China, whose presence in Myanmar has been growing at a precipitous rate since the end of the military dictatorship in 2011.

The story of Burmese jade is inextricably tied to the turbulent history of Kachin, a once-lush country of rolling hills and steep ravines that rubs borders with India's lawless Nagaland.

The Kachin Independence Army (KIA) fought a long and bloody war against the Burmese government, with an official ceasefire declared in 1994, but tensions and outbreaks of violence persist, with Myanmar's security services asserting a heavy presence in the area.


While the roadblocks and curfews may help keep the uneasy peace, they also ensure the government maintains control over the jade business.To trade legally, jade miners have to pay a tax to the government."Smuggling makes my profits much higher,

While the West has largely lifted sanctions against Myanmar in the wake of the tentative steps towards democracy taken by the government of Thein Sein, a ban on jade trading still exists.

Conditions in the mines are abysmal, with the US government stating the jade business "contributes to human rights abuses and undermines Burma's democratic reform process".

While foreigners are not officially allowed to mine jade, Breng Mai tells me most of the major operations are now run by the Chinese.

"The Chinese pay the miners a lot more, but the conditions there are even worse," he says.

Kachin's formerly verdant hills are now scarred and treeless.

"When the Chinese are finished with Kachin State, there will be no jade left. Already mines that were rich 10 years ago are running out," he says.

Until that day, the stalls of Mandalay's labyrinthine jade market will continue to chime with the clatter of precious stones, the call of Chinese and Burmese voices.