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Challenging the State:

The Kuomintang in Post-Colonial Myanmar (Burma)

Michelle Legassicke (Dalhousie University)

Alexander Ripley (Dalhousie University)

1. Introduction

Shadow states and/or states-within-states are most likely to emerge in areas where

formal governance is already fragile or contested. Weak states are characterized by a

diminished (or, in some cases, absent) administrative capacity that negatively colours

civilian perceptions of the regime’s legitimacy. 1 In addition to a decreased ability to

provide public services, the failure of unstable central governments to maintain their

monopoly over the legitimate use of force allows sub-state structures to form.2

The formation of such a sub-state structure stifled the development of Myanmar

(Burma)1 in the years following its independence. During the fall and winter of 1949-1950,

the 93rd Division of the Kuomintang’s (hereafter, KMT) 26th Army fled to an isolated

area of Burma’s Shan State.3 These KMT irregulars would remain (albeit in shrinking

numbers) a presence in the Shan until 1961. 4 Throughout this period of pseudo-

occupation, the 93rd Division would be a thorn in the side of the fragile Burmese

government in the southern capital of Rangoon.

The task of managing the occupation of the Shan by foreign militants diverted

valuable nation-building resources; moreover, the KMT divisions catalyzed indigenous

1 The names “Burma” and “Rangoon” are used throughout. While these terms have largely fallen out of favour, they are consistent with the names used at the time of the events discussed in this essay.

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rebel groups, and exacerbated old territorial disputes which made Burma vulnerable to

conflict with the People’s Republic of China.5 Chronically underdeveloped, and never

historically under the control of any central government, the Shan provided fertile ground

for the establishment of a KMT base of operations convenient to the border with Yunnan.

Paul Kingston, William Reno, Ian Spears, and others have theorized the

development of and long-run consequences associated with states-within-states. More

than merely a fragment of a foreign army, the KMT in Burma nurtured the emergence of

a (contested and volatile) sub-state actor. This episode destabilized the nascent Burmese

state at a critical stage of its development, and would have a lingering effect on its health

and its evolution. Did the behavior of the KMT in the Shan typify that of a shadow state,

a state-within-a-state, or something else entirely?

This short paper contrasts the bizarre history of the KMT in Burma with the

existing literature on sub-state structures — specifically, on shadow states and states-

within-states. Despite establishing a strong grip on Burmese territory and gaining the

support of some local populations, the activities KMT in the Shan did not constitute even

the germ of a shadow state or state-within-a-state: too many functions expected of a state

or developed sub-state structure went unfilled. Instead, the Shan in the early 1950s was

defined by at least two competing levels of authority, none of which was able to provide

the services or exercise the monopoly on force expected of a proper state.

2. Shadow states

William Reno is the chief proponent of the concept of shadow states. Shadow states

are systems of hierarchy and patronage within groups that become an essential part of the

local power structure, providing both security and services for communities. As these

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structures are based on personal ties, elites in shadow states allocate assets for private

use, blurring the separation of an official bureaucratic sphere and the private sphere.6

This personal rule results in the distribution of resources to the select few who form the

base of political support for the shadow state.7 The populations that directly benefit from

the existence of shadow states legitimize these structures. Due to their informal nature,

shadow states are able to exist within fairly strong states.

Reno looks primarily at the reintegration of shadow states after formal conflict has

ended and the state begins to re-establish relations with peripheral territories. In these

cases, the patronage structures of these shadow-governments continue to operate due to

the patron-client and personal relationship that shadow states depend on.8 However,

during the time shadow states exist on the peripheries when state control is limited, they

tend to be a stabilizing force. Due to the construction of shadow states through informal

institutions and patron-client relations, the leadership favours their old connections

which Reno argues reduces “the influence and opportunities for entrepreneurs of

violence, limiting predatory behavior.”9

The KMT presence in Burma did not constitute a shadow state. It was not woven into

the local power structure (it imposed itself from the outside), and it destabilized rather

than secured the communities in which it operated. Notes Sai Aung Tun,

Suddenly, to the great surprise and shock of the Shan, Kuomintang soldiers armed

with modern war equipment appeared on their doorstep with the grand plan to make

Shanland a springboard to reinvade and recapture China from the Red Army […] The

number of Kuomintang soldiers at the beginning of 1950 was about seventeen

hundred, and they occupied the northeastern Shan States around Mong Kang in

Keung Tung State. By May 1951, the Kuomintang force had increased to two thousand

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and established bases along the Myanmar-China border in the Ko Kang and Mong Lun

states.10

The KMT was an occupying force; it was not historically part of the fabric of the

community in the Shan states. Moreover, this was not a case of personal rule designed to

challenge the authority of a distant metropole. The KMT’s arrival in late 1949 did not

presage the emergence of a shadow state; neither its origins nor its behavior mimicked

that of a Reno-esque entity.

3. States-within-states

While the concept of states-within-states receives wider contributions from the

academic community as to its conceptual formation and application in case studies, the

definition used by this paper draws on Ian Spears’ analysis of the characteristics of a state-

within-a-state. One of the defining characteristics that differentiates a state-within-a-

state from a shadow state is that the former has “imposed effective control over a territory

within a larger state and may have an impressive array of institutional structures that

among other things, allows taxes to be collected, services to be provided, and business

with other international actors to be conducted.”11

The focus of states-within-states is to create a viable government structure within

their controlled territory that benefits all citizens; shadow states are structured on

informal personal relationships that only benefit those directly connected to the

leadership. Furthermore, as discussed by Douglass North, states-within-states are able to

better establish institutions, seen in the way that the leadership imposes a particular set

of constraints in the territory that shape the interaction of the citizens.12

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Do competing levels of governance within a state, without constitutionally

demarcated roles, result in anarchy?13 What this paper has called states-within-states

have also been framed as ‘ungoverned spaces,’ without any overarching state authority.14

The concept of ungoverned spaces was popularized among academics due to a need

to better understand to the short-term disorder that states experience when governments

fail to provide goods and services to citizens.15 However, this term used by international

actors to frame the debate of the role of sub-state actors inherently biases the discussion

towards anarchy and conflict. Often, these ungoverned spaces are believed to occur in

failed states, which as Charles Call argues is a concept with no fixed definition given that

it includes such a variety of cases including North Korea, Indonesia, Columbia, and the

Sudan. Failed states are described on a continuum, from the extreme of “being unable to

function as independent entities” to being unable to perform basic state functions.16

Much like ungoverned spaces, failed states jumped into popular lexicon following

the attacks on September 11th, 2001 due to the attention that was focused “on the failure

of the Afghan state to prevent the operations of al-Qaeda on its territory.”17 The United

States government began citing ‘ungoverned spaces’ as a threat to national security, as

they could be “potential safe havens” for illicit actors such as “insurgents, terrorists, and

other violent extremists.” Given the construction of these regions as threats, members of

the international community might not see them as legitimate partners. However, even

in the most extreme cases, other forms of authority rise in order to fill the void left by the

state.

The Shan in the early 1950s was neither ungoverned nor part of a failed state. It

was, however, subject to competing levels of authority: so strong was the KMT presence

that, by March 1953, the Burmese government was allocating 80% of its defensive forces

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to the Shan states.18 The KMT posed a threat for which the Burmese government was

unprepared; thus, a sub-state structure was able to emerge. Rangoon was under-

resourced, and had insufficient troops to take on the six thousand gathered KMT

militants. The KMT also aligned periodically with Shan and Karen insurgents who

challenged the authority of the government in Rangoon, compounding the problem and

furthering its entanglement in Burmese domestic politics.19 Did the KMT presence in the

Shan constitute a state-within-a-state?

Martin Smith characterizes the KMT as being “an army of occupation”.20 This

labeling, of the soldiers in the Shan as foreign militants driven by their own strategic

concerns, is probably more helpful than the conceptions of shadow states and state-

within-states explored in this essay. The KMT occupation of the Shan did not bolster the

security of civilians, but rather the territorial security of a strategically valuable military

staging ground.

Moreover, the nascent sub-state structure which followed the arrival of the 93rd

army filled few of the functions of a state. It was unstable, and provided little security for

civilians: Sai Aung Tun notes that the KMT gave clear directives to its operatives in the

Shan to “stir up the local people to take up arms against the Myanmar troops, to strive for

independence, to organize guerilla troops, to rob government treasuries, to destroy

Myanmar government organizations, to encourage the minority tribes to take up arms,

and to struggle for self-government or independence […]”21 This soured the already

uncomfortable relationship between the isolated Shan states and the Burmese central

government; it created “an atmosphere of distrust and suspicion” 22 which would

undermine the ability of both the government in Rangoon and the far-flung state

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governments to productively complement each other for the betterment of the civilian

population.

By occupying Burmese territory and inciting local populations to renew old

internecine struggles, the KMT undermined the security of the Shan states and their

people. The emergence of large-scale opium extraction and trafficking operations, which

emerged roughly in tandem with the KMT occupation, further contributed to the new

insecurity of communities on Burma’s northeastern flank.23 As Shelby Tucker notes, “the

KMT imposed an opium tax on farmers, regardless of the crops they grew, and to pay the

tax, the farmers grew more opium.”24

Thus, the KMT in the Shan was detrimental to human and state security, provided

few of the services expected of states or state-proxies, and competed with the Burmese

central government for a monopoly on the use of force. Classifiable as neither a shadow

state or state-within-state, the KMT in Burma existed in a grey area between occupying

force and rebel sub-state structure. Articulating the precise nature of its role is an

important challenge for future theorists.

4. Impact on Burmese political development

What is more easily agreed upon is the KMT’s likely negative influence on the long-

run evolution of democracy in Burma. Rangoon’s response to the KMT presence helped

to articulate and entrench a new, important, and highly visible role for the army in public

life. As Martin Smith argues, “the Tatmadaw’s 2 later predominance in Burmese national

life must be seen against the background of the remarkable dangers and hardships of

2 The Burmese Army.

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these years, the many deaths of comrades in battle, and the belief that the army, above

all, preserved the unity of the country.”25 At a critical phase of its development as an

independent state, Burma valuable nation-building resources to the suppression of a

coalition of regional discontents and highly trained foreign militants. This helped to

militarize the public sphere, laying the foundations for the authoritarian rule which

largely defined Burmese politics, at least in the eyes of international observers, from the

1960s until nearly the present day.

5. Conclusions

The occupation of the Shan states by the KMT was both a curious historical episode

and a critical juncture in the development of the modern Burmese state. Did the KMT’s

strong grip on the Shan constitute a state-within-a-state, or a shadow state? In this

exploratory piece, we find that neither theoretical structure captures accurately the role

played by the KMT during its occupation of the Shan. While it had negative impacts on

the development of the larger state, the KMT did not provide for civilians the security or

stability often associated with more developed sub-state structures. As a result, we

conclude that it existed in an as-yet unarticulated space: it exercised less robust authority

than might be expect of a shadow nor a state-within, but nor was it merely an itinerant

guerilla army.

The next phase of this research project will more rigorously test the preliminary

claims made in this work. Additionally, it will seek to better theorize the KMT’s presence,

in its context as a sub-state actor. Finally, a deeper dive into historical primary sources

(including parliamentary and United Nations transcripts) will further inform our ongoing

analysis of this unique historical moment.

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1 Paul Kingston, “States-Within-States: Historical and Theoretical Perspectives,” in States Within-States: Incipient Political Entities in the Post-Cold War Era, eds. Paul Kingston and Ian S. Spears (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2004), 1. 2 Kingston, “States-Within-States: Historical and Theoretical Perspectives,” 4. 3 Shelby Tucker, Burma: The Curse of Independence (London: Pluto, 2001), 165. 4 Chi-shad Liang, Burma’s Foreign Relations: Neutralism in Theory and Practice (New York: Praeger, 1990), 83. 5 Tucker, 166. 6 William Reno, “Shadow States and the Political Economy of Civil Wars,” in Greed and Grievance: Economic Agendas in Civil Wars, eds. Mats Berdal and David M. Malone (Boulder, CO.: Lynne Rienner Publishers, 2000), 46. 7 Ian S. Spears, “States-Within-States: An Introduction to their Empirical Attributes,” in States-Within-States: Incipient Political Entities in the Post-Cold War Era, eds. Paul Kingston and Ian S. Spears (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2004), 15. 8 Spears, “States-Within-States: An Introduction to their Empirical Attributes,” 15. 9 William Reno, “The Collapse of Sierra Leone and the Emergence of Multiple States-Within-States,” in States-Within-States: Incipient Political Entities in the Post-Cold War Era, eds. Paul Kingston and Ian S. Spears (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2004), 49. 10 Sai Aung Tun, History of the Shan State: From its Origins to 1962 (Chiang Mai: Silkworm, 2009), 304. 11 Spears, “States-Within-States: An Introduction to their Empirical Attributes,” 16. 12 Reno, “The Collapse of Sierra Leone and the Emergence of Multiple States-Within-States,” 48. 13 Kingston, “States-Within-States: Historical and Theoretical Perspectives,” 1. 14 Anne Clunan, “Ungoverned Spaces? The Need for Re-Evaluation,” in Ungoverned Spaces: Alternatives to State Authority in an Era of Softened Sovereignty, eds. Anne Clunan and Harold Trinkunas (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2010), 4. 15 Clunan, Anne and Harold Trinkunas, “Conceptualizing Ungoverned Spaces,” in Ungoverned Spaces: Alternatives to State Authority in an Era of Softened Sovereignty, eds. Anne Clunan and Harold Trinkunas (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2010), 17. 16 Charles Call, “The Fallacy of the ‘Failed State’,” Third World Quarterly 29:8 (2008), 1492. 17 Ibid., 1491. 18 Liang, Burma’s Foreign Relations: Neutralism in Theory and Practice, 70. 19 Sai Aung Tun, History of the Shan State: From its Origins to 1962, 307. 20 Smith, Burma: Insurgency and the Politics of Ethnicity (London: Zed Books, 1991), 153. 21 Sai Aung Tun, History of the Shan State: From its Origins to 1962, 314. 22 Ibid. 23 Ibid, 311. 24 Tucker, Burma: The Curse of Independence, 167. 25 Smith, Burma: Insurgency and the Politics of Ethnicity, 121.

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BIBLIOGRAPHY

Call, Charles. “The Fallacy of the ‘Failed State’.” Third World Quarterly 29:8 (2008), 1491-1507. Clunan, Anne. “Ungoverned Spaces? The Need for Re-Evaluation,” in Ungoverned Spaces: Alternatives to State Authority in an Era of Softened Sovereignty, eds. Anne Clunan and Harold Trinkunas. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2010. Clunan, Anne and Harold Trinkunas. “Conceptualizing Ungoverned Spaces,” in Ungoverned Spaces: Alternatives to State Authority in an Era of Softened Sovereignty, eds. Anne Clunan and Harold Trinkunas. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2010. Kingston, Paul. “States-Within-States: Historical and Theoretical Perspectives,” in States Within-States: Incipient Political Entities in the Post-Cold War Era, eds. Paul Kingston and Ian S. Spears. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2004. Liang, Chi-shad. Burma’s Foreign Relations: Neutralism in Theory and Practice. New York: Praeger, 1990. Reno, William. “Shadow States and the Political Economy of Civil Wars,” in Greed and Grievance: Economic Agendas in Civil Wars, eds. Mats Berdal and David M. Malone. Boulder, CO.: Lynne Rienner Publishers, 2000. Reno, William. “The Collapse of Sierra Leone and the Emergence of Multiple States-Within-States,” in States-Within-States: Incipient Political Entities in the Post-Cold War Era, eds. Paul Kingston and Ian S. Spears. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2004. Smith, Martin. Burma: Insurgency and the Politics of Ethnicity. London: Zed Books, 1991. Spears, Ian S. “States-Within-States: An Introduction to their Empirical Attributes,” in States-Within-States: Incipient Political Entities in the Post-Cold War Era, eds. Paul Kingston and Ian S. Spears. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2004. Tucker, Shelby. Burma: The Curse of Independence. London: Pluto, 2001. Tun, Sai Aung. History of the Shan State: From its Origins to 1962. Chiang Mai: Silkworm, 2009.