Myanmar Jade: World’s biggest source of translucent gem

Hyderabad: Ninety per cent of the world’s jade is mined in Myanmar. Myanmar’s jade industry is worth billions of dollars annually. Most stones are bought by Chinese traders. However, the industry is plagued by corruption resulting in illegal export of the country’s natural wealth. Read on… Myanmar produces 90% of the world’s jade. Most of […]

Hyderabad: Ninety per cent of the world’s jade is mined in Myanmar. Myanmar’s jade industry is worth billions of dollars annually. Most stones are bought by Chinese traders. However, the industry is plagued by corruption resulting in illegal export of the country’s natural wealth. Read on…
Myanmar produces 90% of the world’s jade. Most of it comes from Hpakant, where rights groups say mining firms with links to military elites and ethnic armed groups make billions of dollars a year. However, the industry has so far failed to benefit either local people or the economy in general

Jade Stones

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The Jade stones are extracted from the mineral called Jadeite. It is a silicate of sodium and aluminium. Jadeite is found in pink, green, orange, lavender and brown colours. However, the green varieties are popular.

Low-quality jade is primarily used for decorations like tiles, while medium to high quality jade is typically turned into carvings and jewelry. Myanmar Jade stone trade is more than 30 billion USD per year.

The Jadeite deposits found in Myanmar are of the highest quality in the world. The stone has great significance in Chinese culture. Chinese believe that the stone is the link between heaven and hell.

Chinese and Jade trade

After the military coup in Burma in 1962, many of jade mines were nationalized. This forced the jade traders to flee Burma and settle in Thailand. Due to this, even today, jade stone from the mines of Myanmar is exported to China. They are exported from Thailand to Hong Kong. Hong Kong acts as a gateway for the stones to reach China.

Hong Kong as gateway

As Jade trade, there are several industries that are using Hong Kong as Gateway to increase their trade with China. This is one of the reasons for the Chinese to impose the recent National Security Law on Hong Kong.

Landslides frequent

In July 2020, there was a massive landslide at the jade stone mining site, Hpakant in Myanmar that killed more than 100 people. Hpakant is the largest jade mine in the world where the landslide occurred.

Deadly landslides and other accidents are common in the poorly regulated mines of Hpakant, which draws impoverished workers from across Myanmar in search of gems, which are mostly exported to China.

Economic pressures due to the Covid-19 pandemic have drawn more migrants to the jade mines, even as conflict has flared since Myanmar’s military seized power in a coup in February. The ousted government of Nobel laureate Aung San Suu Kyi had pledged to clean up the industry when it took power in 2016, but activists say little has changed.

Illegal smuggling

An estimated 50 to 80 percent of jade was smuggled before the licensing suspension, with the transactions done without ever entering the formal system in Myanmar. Activists have urged the international community to impose sanctions on the top military leader and the companies involved in the jade and other gem mining industry. They also want the international community to persuade China to ditch the jade trade with Myanmar.

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