Over 60,000 Myanmar refugees pile across China border

Want China Times, Xinhua and Staff Reporter 2015-03-08

Refugees load their belongings onto a truck before moving to a camp
 in Mandalay from their temporary refugee camp at a monastery in
Lashio, northern Myanmar, Feb. 18. (Photo/CFP)

A Chinese city bordering Myanmar has seen more than 60,000 refugees arrive since the outbreak of conflict in the north of the Southeast Asian nation, the party chief of southwest China's Yunnan province said Saturday.

China has provided the Myanmar refugees with relief, including water and medical services, in Lincang, a city bordering Myanmar, said Li Jiheng, secretary of the Yunnan Provincial Committee of the Communist Party of China.

Strict border management measures have been carried out in Lincang but the border was not closed, Li told journalists after a panel discussion with other Yunnan lawmakers at the ongoing annual session of the National People's Congress, China's top legislature.

"The border area in Yunnan is stable, the supplies are ample and the price is stable," he said. "The traffic is smooth."

China's Foreign Ministry has said that the ongoing Kokang conflict in northern Myanmar is an internal affair of the country that should be not be intervened in by China. Although the government retains its "humanitarian" neutral stance between the rebels and the Myanmar military, projects funded and run by China's state-owned companies have been responsible for stewing conflict in the border nation, according to a report in Malaysia-based the Star.