Emulating China’s Red Army, Communist Party of Burma Supports Its Military Through Opium Production

Burma has surpassed Afghanistan to become the world’s largest producer of opium.

The allure of the poppy. ‘Confessions of an English Opium-Eater’ was the first modern drug memoir and set the tone for opium use for decades. Here, a field of Papaver somniferum (Opium poppy). Opium is extracted from the latex of the unripe seed pods. Ripe seeds are innocuous and widely used in baking. Javier Cañada/Unsplash

Burma, also known as Myanmar, has overtaken Afghanistan to become the largest producer of opium in the world. This is the legacy of the Communist Party of Burma (CPB) learning from the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) experience of “feeding the army by producing drugs.” During the Sino-Japan war, the CCP, through the cultivation and sale of opium, poisoned its own people to save itself.

The United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime reported on Dec. 12 that Burma has surpassed Afghanistan to become the world’s largest producer of opium following the Taliban’s declaration that opium cultivation and drug production are illegal.