Five years on: Lincang further opens up to Myanmar

In the past five years, Lincang City in southwest Yunnan has made breakthrough in opening up to Myanmar by increasing interconnectivity, said Yang Anxing, head of Lincang City Publicity Department.  

Yang said this in Kunming on Sept.14 at a press conference by Yunnan Provincial Government, together with other Lincang officials including Lincang Border Economic Cooperative Zone managing director Duan Chunxu. 

The Qingshihe Port in Mengding Town is Yunnan’s first land port where permit to Myanmar can be granted simply by a passport. In Lincang, 19 service stations have been set up for money change in the pilot area of financial reform. The number of money-change posts in Lincang ranks first among 16 administrative divisions in Yunnan.

Thanks to systematic official visits and business exchanges, Lincang also set up business representative offices in northern Myanmar city of Lashio and the Myanmar capital of Naypyidaw.

A second-class highway linking up Qingshuihe Port and another town in Myanmar has opened to traffic, and three China-Myanmar tourist routes have been designed and open to visitors.

To facilitate economic cooperation and people-to-people exchanges, Lincang has consecutively hosted six border trade fairs and four Asian micro film art festivals.

By joining hands with north Myanmar, Lincang also built up 80,000-hectare industrial area of special produces, with the Lincang-based Nanhua sugar company taking the lead. In 2016, the company grew around 18,000 hectares of sugarcane in north Myanmar, with an annual output of 553,500 tons.

From 2011 to 2016, the cargo throughput of the Qingshuihe Port reached 1.07 million tons, increasing 12 times. The trade volume of cross-border markets amounted to 3.05 billion yuan, increasing 20 times compared with the 2011 data of 0.15 bln yuan.

Qingshuihe has become the second biggest land port serving China-Myanmar trade.

In 2016, Lincang’s aggregate economic volume was calculated at 55.2 billion yuan, a year-on-year growth of 11.2% since 2012. Around 460,000 were lifted out of poverty during the same period.

Source: www.scio.gov.cn; Trans-editing Eric Wang