Sai Leun, the founder of an ethnic armed group based in Mong La in eastern Shan State, died of lung cancer in China last week, local media reported. He was 76.
The Shan Herald Agency for News confirmed that Leun died on the night of August 7. “He passed away from cancer last night in the hospital,” the source said. “The family is now working on bringing his body back to Mong La.”
Leun was the ethnic Chinese founding leader of the National Democratic Alliance Army (NDAA), an armed group that controls a sliver of territory along the Chinese border in eastern Shan State. The NDAA was one of several armed groups that were formed following the collapse of the Communist Party of Burma (CPB) in 1989, which also included the more powerful United Wa State Army (UWSA) and Myanmar National Democratic Alliance Army (MNDAA). He will reportedly be succeeded as NDAA leader by his son Htein Lin.
Born in Hainan island in 1948, Leun – Lin Mingxian in Mandarin – moved to Yunnan province during the Cultural Revolution and joined the Communist Party of Burma (CPB) in the 1960s. When the CPB collapsed after mutinies in 1989, Leun founded the NDAA and quickly signed a ceasefire agreement with Myanmar’s military government. Like the UWSA and MNDAA, this arrangement granted him control of a “special region” where he enjoyed autonomy and the right to maintain his own forces. In particular, he was granted control over the opium trade in and around Mong La, the border town where many of his fighters settled.
During an event marking the 30th anniversary of the ceasefire agreement of 2019, Leun vowed to preserve peace and stability in Shan State. “Considering the overall situation and actively participating in the peace process and through open dialogue, we will make sure that permanent peace is assured in our region,” he said.
Since the ceasefire agreement, the NDAA has enjoyed close and cooperative relations with the other CPB successor groups. According to the Irrawaddy, Leun married a daughter of Peng Jiasheng, the late founder of the MNDAA. After the Myanmar military drove the MNDAA out of its “special region” of Kokang in 2009, Leun granted Peng sanctuary in Mong La, and the leader’s funeral was held in the town following his death in February 2022. The NDAA also enjoyed the protection of the UWSA, whose own “special region” lay just to the north of Mong La. When Kokang fell to the Myanmar military in 2009, the UWSA stationed more than 1,000 soldiers in the Mong La area as a protective measure.
Under the terms of the 1989 ceasefire agreement, Leun ruled his territory by fiat, protected by an ethnic Shan and Akha army of 3,000-4,000 that U.S. officials once likened to a “James Bondian private police force.” The NDAA territory, known officially as Special Region No. 4, boomed, amid growing cross-border connectivity with China. In the mid-1990s, after coming under strong Chinese and U.S. pressure to stem the flow of drugs from the region, the NDAA announced a crackdown and in 1997 declared itself “opium-free” by building a museum in Mong La to commemorate the achievement. When I visited Mong La in 2014, I spoke to a senior NDAA official who said that the enclave now drew most of its income from plantation agriculture. “There is no more opium; it is guaranteed,” he said.
Whether or not this was true – many experts disagreed – it was evident by that stage that the NDAA’s attempts to foster “legitimate” industries were only partially successful, and that the zone remained heavily reliant on gambling and the illicit activities that are often associated with it. In the late 1990s, the group set up a string of casinos along the border with China, but when Chinese authorities crossed the border and shut them down in 2005, the NDAA shifted the gambling houses to a village 16 kilometers to the south.
As in other parts of mainland Southeast Asia, Mong La’s casinos have likely functioned as a gateway to more explicitly criminal activities, and there is substantial evidence that the NDAA has hosted the online scam operations that have metastasized across mainland Southeast Asia since the COVID-19 pandemic. The region’s porous border with China has also created lucrative smuggling routes for drugs and endangered animals, the latter of which, during my visit in 2014, were openly for sale in the markets and boutiques of Mong La.
As one Myanmar observer noted on X this week, Leun’s passing now means that all three of the armed groups that emerged from the collapse of the CBP have “completed dynastic successions.”
Peng Jiasheng, the founding member of the MNDAA, died in February 2022, and his son, Peng Daxun (aka Peng Daren), led the recent campaign to retake the Kokang region. Bao Youxiang, the reclusive former CPB commander who founded the UWSA, has largely ceded day-to-day control of the organization to his son Bao Aikang (aka Bao Ai Kham) and a younger generation of leaders, who made their debut at a meeting between the UWSA and MNDAA in January.
These new leaders have already done much to consolidate and expand the legacies of the old guard, which Myanmar’s post-coup conflict has provided them with ample opportunities to do. The MNDAA has formed the spearhead of the Operation 1027 offensive that has driven the Myanmar military from northern Shan State over the past 10 months. In January, the group completed its reconquest of Kokang, ending nearly 15 years of “exile.” Then, in the second phase of the offensive last month, the MNDAA completed the stunning seizure of Lashio, the largest city in northern Shan State, which saw the Myanmar military lose a regional military command for the first time in its history.
The UWSA, too, after remaining mostly aloof from the post-coup conflict, has taken advantage of the collapsing Myanmar military presence in Shan State to extend its control. It has deployed a “peacekeeping” force to Lashio and quietly taken control of territories to the west of the Salween River. As Amara Thiha wrote in these pages last month, the group’s ultimate aim may be to connect its main territory along the Chinese border with its smaller territory bordering Thailand to the south.
While “initially criticized for their inaction and seen as subservient to China (not without reason),” the Myanmar observer argued, these groups “have dealt the military its strongest blows yet – eclipsing even the greatest successes of their CPB predecessors.”
Under their founding leaders, all three of these armed groups helped shape the present dynamics of Shan State. Under new and more vigorous leadership, they now seem certain to play an important role in shaping whatever Myanmar emerges in the months and years to come.