Kokang Special Region

Kokang ကိုးကန့် / 果敢
Historical region
Map of Kokang
Country	Myanmar
Highest point	2,548 m
Area
• Total	10,000 km2 (4,000 sq mi)
Elevation	1,000 m (3,000 ft)
Population (2009)
• Total	150,000
• Density	15/km2 (39/sq mi)

Kokang (Burmese: ကိုးကန့်; Chinese: 果敢; pinyin: Guǒgǎn; Wade–Giles: Kuo-kan) is a historical region in Myanmar (Burma). It is located in the northern part of Shan State, with the Salween River to its west, and sharing a border with China's Yunnan Province to the east. Its total land area is around 10,000 square kilometres (3,900 sq mi). The capital is Laukkai. Kokang is mostly populated by Kokang people, a Han Chinese group living in Myanmar.

Kokang had been historically part of China for several centuries, but was largely left alone by successive governments due to its remote location. The region formed a de facto buffer zone between Yunnan province and the Shan States. The Yang clan, originally Ming loyalists from Nanjing, consolidated the area into a single polity. In 1840, the Yunnan governor granted the Yang clan the hereditary rights as a vassal of the Qing dynasty. After the British conquest of Upper Burma in 1885, Kokang was initially placed in China under the 1894 Sino-British boundary convention. It was ceded to British Burma in a supplementary agreement signed in February 1897.

From the 1960s to 1989, the area was controlled by the Communist Party of Burma, and after the party's armed wing disbanded in 1989 it became a special region of Myanmar under the control of the Myanmar Nationalities Democratic Alliance Army (MNDAA). Armed conflicts between the MNDAA and the Tatmadaw have resulted in the 2009 Kokang incident and the 2015 Kokang offensive.

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