CCP Orders Chinese People to Return Amid Pandemic in Burma

A Burmese woman walks behind a warning sign along the boundary line in the China-Burma border town of Wanding, in China's southwestern province of Yunnan, on Sept. 27 2007. STR/AFP via Getty Images

Despite the spread of the CCP virus in Burma (also known as Myanmar), the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) has recently issued notice to Chinese nationals stranded in northern Burma to return to China by June 30, or else they will have their household registrations canceled. This is a completely different move from the CCP’s previous practice of strictly controlling the return of its citizens. A Chinese professor suggests that the reason for this is the emergence of an armed resistance force in northern Burma that frightens the CCP.

On June 1, the official WeChat account of the town of Gangyi in Tianmen city, Hubei Province, released an announcement with a list of the names, ID numbers, and addresses of 33 people who were called “suspected criminals who have crossed the China-Burma border,” according to Chinese media The Paper.

The announcement said that those who return to China and take the initiative to contact and report to the Chinese authorities before June 15, 2021, would be punished less severely. Otherwise, they will be declared missing or dead. Their household registrations would be canceled, and a series of other disciplinary measures will be implemented.

After that, similar announcements and name lists were released in many other places, including Bingyang county in Guangxi Province, Ruichang city, Xiushui county, Poyang county, and Yugan county in Jiangxi Province, and Luoyang city in Henan Province.

Since May, many provincial governments including Jiangxi, Guangdong, Fujian, Zhejiang, Guizhou, and Sichuan, have all issued notices advising Chinese people stranded in northern Burma to return. The notices require all people stranded in northern Burma to return home by June 30 or else they will be severely punished on the grounds of combating telecommunication fraud and rectifying cross-border crimes at the China-Burma border.

Liu Jun (pseudonym), a taxi driver who was smuggled into the Mongla area in northern Burma many years ago, told The Epoch Times that since May, Chinese people in northern Burma have all received phone calls from village heads or police stations in their hometowns, telling them to return home by a deadline.

Jun said that the Chinese government is trying to get people to return to China batch by batch, and the police had a detailed list of people who they wanted to go back to China. He was not sure how many were on that list, but there are currently more than 100,000 mainlanders in northern Burma.

Another person, Wang Hong (pseudonym), who runs a restaurant in the Wa Special Region, also told The Epoch Times that the CCP’s public security officials had contacted his family members and told them that they have to return to China and report to the police about their trip, including where they plan to enter China and when they would be put under quarantine. The police would then come to meet and escort them.

The CCP authorities said in the notice that those who do not return to China will have their family members in China affected. Their schooling, employment, salaries, and event bank accounts could all be affected.

According to a Chinese media report, as the deadline approaches, long lines of people are forming near the border crossings to register and wait to be quarantined, and Chinese people who run supermarkets and restaurants in northern Burma are rushing to dispose of goods and transfer stores in order to return to China before the end of the month.

A netizen who was previously stranded in northern Burma shared his experience of waiting in line to return to China: first, he had to queue up at the local government in Burma to get a number. The best time to queue was at 3:00 or 4:00 a.m., or even earlier. He had to be quarantined for three days at the quarantine point in Burma and get his nucleic acid test report after two tests. After entering China, he had to stay in quarantine near the border for 21 days. Illegal immigrants are fined.

Since the outbreak of the pandemic, the CCP has not allowed overseas Chinese to return to China. Around April of last year, there were several videos on the internet showing Chinese overseas who wanted to return to China being refused by the Chinese authorities.

The ‘V Brigade’ Resistance

Yuan Hongbing, a former Peking University law professor living in Australia, said in a June 11 interview with the Chinese language media Secret China that the Chinese Revolutionary Party has established a political base for armed resistance against the CCP in northern Burma, formed by more than a dozen organizations and groups, including a group called the “V Brigade.”

Yuan Hongbing said that in September last year, the V Brigade issued a political manifesto video, stating that it would implement the people’s right to revolt against tyranny through democratic revolution and armed resistance and then destroy the Chinese communist regime.

Yuan Hongbing said, “Such a political declaration gives a political positioning to the entire armed resistance base in northern Burma against the Chinese communist tyranny.”

Yuan said that the CCP had previously stigmatized the force, describing northern Burma as a place of crime, fraud, drug trafficking, and gun smuggling, “in a bid to cover up the fact that there is a political base of armed resistance to communist tyranny in northern Burma through their big international and domestic propaganda machines and their iron curtain of lies.”

Yuan also said that another important reason for the CCP’s fear of the V Brigade is its role as a model and example to others.

He analyzed that one of the roles of the V Brigade is “to lead the Chinese society and the Chinese people out of their fear of the CCP’s tyranny through the spirit of strong will.”

He said that one of the major reasons why the Chinese communist regime has continued to this day is that the CCP has created a general mood of terror through the violence of state terrorism, and that the V Brigade’s fighting spirit and resistance has led people out of their fear of communist tyranny.

Pandemic in Burma is Severe

As of June 19, more than 147,000 people have been infected with the CCP virus in Burma, with 3,258 deaths.

Reuters reported on June 4 that Burma reported the highest number of new cases since health services and testing collapsed following a Feb. 1 coup, heightening fears of a worsening outbreak near Burma’s border with India.

Even though the number of 212 cases reported across Burma on June 4 was low compared to many neighboring countries, it was the highest level in more than four months.

Many of the cases came from the state of Chin, which borders India, raising concerns that a more contagious variant of the virus initially found in India is now spreading in Burma.