<p><span><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table float_right"><div><div class="image on-image"><p class="source"><span><a href="http://pictures.reuters.com/C.aspx?VP3=SearchResult&amp;VBID=2C0BXZ1X3E74F&amp;SMLS=1&amp;RW=1440&amp;RH=720#/SearchResult&amp;VBID=2C0BXZ1X3E74F&amp;SMLS=1&amp;RW=1440&amp;RH=720&amp;POPUPPN=26&amp;POPUPIID=2C0BF1FW8JQF1">REUTERS/Neil Hall</a></span></p><p class="caption">Protestors hold banners in Parliament Square during a 'March for Europe' demonstration against Britain's decision to leave the European Union, central London, Britain July 2, 2016.</p></div><p></p></div></div></span></p><p><span>In the aftermath of the United Kingdom's vote to leave the European Union, we are left with more questions than answers. What </span><a href="https://www.cer.org.uk/sites/default/files/pb_piris_brexit_12jan16.pdf" target="_blank">kind of relationship</a><span> will the UK now forge with the EU, and how will that affect economic relations and migration? </span></p><p><span>Will </span><a href="http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-scotland-scotland-politics-36621030" target="_blank">Scotland</a><span> and </span><a href="http://www.newstatesman.com/politics/uk/2016/06/what-does-brexit-mean-northern-ireland" target="_blank">Northern Ireland</a><span> opt to leave? What is the future of British <keyword id="6358883" type="PERSON" weightage="100" keywordseo="Politics">politics</keyword>, given turbulence within both the </span><a href="http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2016/jun/26/conservative-leadership-rift-widens-brexit" target="_blank">Conservative</a><span> and </span><a href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2016/06/26/eu-referendum-hilary-benn-sacked-from-shadow-cabinet-by-jeremy-c/" target="_blank">Labour</a><span> Parties? </span></p><p><span>Will a successful Brexit set a precedent for other EU members -- perhaps even some </span><a href="http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-36615879" target="_blank">eurozone members</a><span>-- to leave the union? What are the long-term economic consequences of the resulting uncertainty? </span></p><p><span>Will Brexit even happen at all, given the </span><a href="http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/brexit-eu-referendum-campaigners-there-is-no-plan-next-pm-tory-leadership-contest-a7104711.html" target="_blank">absence</a><span> of a clear post-referendum plan, the apparent </span><a href="http://qz.com/717182/a-brexit-conspiracy-theory-nails-the-no-win-situation-boris-johnson-now-finds-himself-in/" target="_blank">unwillingness</a><span> of 'Leave' campaign leaders to invoke Article 50 of the Lisbon Treaty, and the fact that the referendum was </span><a href="http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2016/jun/26/fightback-against-brexit-on-cards-remain-eu-referendum-heseltine" target="_blank">advisory and non-binding</a><span>? Answers to these questions will make themselves evident in the coming weeks, months, and years.</span></p><p>But there's a bigger question worth asking: What are the implications of Brexit for democracy? Arguably, Brexit represents the first major casualty of the ascent of digital democracy over representative democracy. This claim deserves an explanation.</p><p>When historians look back at the world of the past 25 years, they will likely associate it not with terrorism or growing inequality but with the twin phenomena of the "<a href="http://www.economist.com/node/11402606" target="_blank">rise of the rest</a>" (particularly China and India) and of globalization. Globalization involves the easier, faster and cheaper flow of goods, people, capital and information. One big enabler of globalization is the internet, the global network of networks that allows billions of people to cheaply and easily access enormous amounts of digital information.</p><p>The rise of service and high-technology industries, trade liberalization, <a href="http://www.vox.com/2015/1/22/7869319/largest-container-ship" target="_blank">container shipping</a>, and the development of <a href="http://www.mckinsey.com/global-themes/employment-and-growth/financial-globalization" target="_blank">financial markets</a> have also been important enablers, as is the increased ease and lower cost of travel, particularly <a href="http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2013/02/how-airline-ticket-prices-fell-50-in-30-years-and-why-nobody-noticed/273506/" target="_blank">by air</a>.</p><p>Many <a href="https://newrepublic.com/article/113272/eric-schmidt-and-jared-cohenthe-new-digital-ages-futurist-schlock" target="_blank">technology optimists</a> have assumed that globalization would lead to the democratization of information and decision-making, and also greater cosmopolitanism. Citizens would be better informed, less likely to be silenced, and able to communicate their views more effectively to their leaders. They would also have greater empathy and understanding of other peoples the more they lived next to them, visited their countries, read their news, communicated, and did business with them. Or so the thinking went.</p><p><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table"><div><div class="image on-image"><p class="source"><span>Reuters/Neil Hall</span></p><p class="caption">Former Mayor of London Boris Johnson (L) and Britain's Secretary of State for Justice Michael Gove pose at a Vote Leave rally in London, Britain, June 4, 2016.</p></div><p></p></div></div></p><p>But there has been little to justify such panglossianism. There is <a href="https://www.amazon.in/Internet-Freedom-2-1-Developing-Democracies-ebook/dp/B00U32PWKI" target="_blank">some evidence</a> for a correlation between greater information, political democratization and economic progress, in that all three have advanced steadily, if at different paces, over the past two decades.</p><p>But that correlation is weak. Instead, digital democracy -- the ability to receive information in almost real time through mass media and to make one's voice heard through social media -- has contributed to polarization, gridlock, dissatisfaction and misinformation. This is as equally applicable to the countries in which modern democracy took root -- in the United States and Europe -- as it is to India, the biggest and most complex democracy in the developing world.</p><p>The ascent of digital democracy around the world has some shared features. One characteristic is that access to greater information has, rather counterintuitively, contributed to a "<a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/fact-checking-in-a-post-fact-world/2016/05/19/d37434e2-1d0f-11e6-8c7b-6931e66333e7_story.html" target="_blank">post-fact</a>" information environment. Nick Cohen -- speaking of British pro-"Leave" journalists-turned-politicians Boris Johnson and Michael Gove --<a href="https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/jun/25/boris-johnson-michael-gove-eu-liars" target="_blank">called out</a> their use of bold claims, their contempt for practical questions, their sneering disregard for expertise, and their transgressions of the bounds of political spin.</p><p>These tactics are not all that dissimilar to Donald Trump's assertions about Barack Obama's birth certificate or <a href="http://thehill.com/blogs/ballot-box/presidential-races/261303-feds-push-back-on-myth-syrian-refugee-stat-used-by-trump" target="_blank">immigration policies</a>, or Subramanian Swamy's <a href="http://scroll.in/article/810515/mentally-not-fully-indian-swamys-attack-on-rajan-reflects-paradox-of-bjps-approach-to-nris" target="_blank">insinuations</a> about the nationality of senior Indian policymakers.</p><p>But leaders only exploit the vulnerabilities of a post-fact world. The conditions have been laid by the digital sphere. A recent example springs to mind. There is a widespread belief on Indian social media that US presidential candidate Hillary Clinton is somehow anti-India, pro-Pakistan, and/or anti-Modi. I am no supporter of Ms. Clinton, but as someone who worked on foreign affairs in Washington and knows many of her advisors, I found these claims baffling.</p><p>In fact, Clinton's political opponents (whether <a href="http://www.rediff.com/news/2007/jun/15clinton.htm" target="_blank">Barack Obama</a> in 2008 or <a href="http://indianexpress.com/article/world/world-news/donald-trump-hillary-clinton-foundation-india-us-nuclear-deal-amar-singh-cii-2875427/" target="_blank">Donald Trump</a> in 2016) have accused her of being too close to India, while Pakistanis often view her as <a href="http://www.dawn.com/news/1114535" target="_blank">critical</a> of their country and Prime Minister Modi appears to enjoy <a href="http://indianexpress.com/article/india/india-others/clintons-meet-narendra-modi/" target="_blank">cordial relations</a> with her. After some inquiries, and a few tips, I managed to trace these sentiments to a single publication, a poorly sourced and misleading <a href="http://www.sunday-guardian.com/news/obama-quietly-reverses-hillarys-get-modi-policy" target="_blank">column</a> that gained widespread circulation upon its release. The article's contents were deemed sufficiently credible to have now become instilled as absolute fact in the minds of many Indians active online. In a digital democracy, a lie or (better yet) a half-lie if told enough times becomes truth.</p><p>Another outcome of digital democracy may be a variation of what the psychologist Barry Schwartz has <a href="https://books.google.co.in/books?id=g422yyua-P8C" target="_blank">called</a> the paradox of choice. Quite possibly, the greater abundance of political choice leads to less satisfaction, and the result is citizens increasingly voicing their displeasure with their available political and policy choices.</p><p>The political platforms of mainstream parties rarely adhere entirely to individual voters' views. That may explain why many voters are gravitating towards parties, factions or leaders who offer the simplest messages, and project themselves as alternatives to the mainstream.</p><p>A third result of digital democracy, and one that has been better documented, is the political echo chamber. Social media, rather than creating connections with people who possess differing views and ideologies, tends to reinforce prejudices. As the psychologist Nicholas DiFonzo has <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/roomfordebate/2011/04/21/barack-obama-and-the-psychology-of-the-birther-myth/the-echo-chamber-effect" target="_blank">noted</a>, "Americans across the political spectrum tend to trust the news media (and 'facts' provided by the media) less than their own social group."</p><p>This makes it easier for views and rumours to circulate and intensify within like-minded groups. Similar digital gerrymandering was evident in the EU Referendum in Britain and the polarization is palpable in the Indian online political space.</p><p><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table"><div><div class="image on-image"><p class="source"><span>Olivia Harris/Reuters</span></p><p class="caption">Nigel Farage.</p></div><p></p></div></div></p><p>Finally, instant information has increased the theatricality of politics. With public statements and positions by governments, political parties and individual leaders now broadcast to constituents in real time, compromise, a necessary basis of good governance, has become more difficult. When portrayed as a betrayal of core beliefs, compromise often amounts to political suicide.</p><p>Political grandstanding also contributes to legislative gridlock, with elected representatives often resorting to <a href="http://indianexpress.com/article/india/india-news-india/walkout-in-ls-over-v-k-singhs-remark/" target="_blank">walkouts</a>, <a href="http://www.wired.com/2016/06/house-sit-went-people-made-happen/" target="_blank">sit-ins</a>, or <a href="http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/dennis-skinner-called-prime-minister-7734873" target="_blank">insults</a> -- all manufactured for maximum viral effect -- instead of trying to reach solutions behind closed doors. Even as ease of travel allows legislators to spend more time in their constituencies, making them more sensitized to their constituents' concerns, less gets done at the national or supranational level. It is a trend that, once again, applies equally to the <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2013/10/01/us/politics/congress-shutdown-debate.html?_r=0" target="_blank">United States</a>, <a href="http://www.euractiv.com/section/social-europe-jobs/news/merkel-freezes-germany-s-debate-over-new-immigration-law/" target="_blank">Europe</a>, and <a href="http://www.firstpost.com/politics/parliament-logjam-can-congress-beat-bjps-record-of-disruption-2361104.html" target="_blank">India</a>.</p><p><span>The unintended consequences of digital democracy -- misinformation and discontent, polarization and gridlock -- mean that the boundary between politician and troll is blurring. The tone of democratic politics increasingly reflects that of anonymous online discourse: nasty, brutish, and short. And successful politicians are increasingly those who are able to take advantage of the resulting sentiments. </span></p><p><span>Exploiting divisions, appealing to base instincts, making outlandish claims, resorting to falsehoods, and pooh-poohing details and expertise. All that could just as easily describe the playbooks of populists around the world, on the right and left: Marine Le Pen, Frauke Petry, Donald Trump or Subramanian Swamy as much as Jeremy Corbyn, Beppe Grillo, Bernie Sanders or Arvind Kejriwal.</span></p><div itemprop="articleBody"><p>In all these cases, populists are willing to cross the lines that mainstream parties have flirted with, becoming forces that the centre cannot hold. US Republicans <a href="http://nbclatino.com/2013/07/24/poll-anti-immigrant-rhetoric-hurts-republicans-in-battleground-states/" target="_blank">fanned</a> the anti-immigration sentiments that first the Tea Party and then Trump are only taking to their natural conclusions, just as mainstream Democrats' economic protectionism has been seized upon by Sanders.</p><p>Cameron's <a href="http://www.economist.com/blogs/bagehot/2011/11/britain-and-eu-0" target="_blank">euroscepticism</a>, explained away initially as constructive criticism, spiralled out of control with Brexit, just as those who pronounced the <a href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/politics/labour/8026708/Ed-Miliband-New-Labour-is-dead.html" target="_blank">death of New Labour</a> helped paved the way for Corbyn. Will the same one day apply in India, to the economic populism of the Congress, of which Kejriwal has become a new torchbearer, or to the chauvinism of the right, which Swamy now threatens to run away with?</p><p>Brexit is not anti-globalization so much as a product of globalization. It is also a product of democracy rather than an affront to it. But it is a democracy of a different sort, one that many of its ideological forebears anticipated.</p><p><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table"><div><div class="image on-image"><p class="source"><span>REUTERS/Neil Hall</span></p><p class="caption">Vote leave supporters wave Union flags, following the result of the EU referendum, outside Downing Street in London, Britain June 24, 2016.</p></div><p></p></div></div></p><p>When James Madison <a href="http://www.constitution.org/fed/federa10.htm" target="_blank">warned</a> of "the superior force of an interested and overbearing majority," or John Stuart Mill <a href="https://books.google.co.in/books?id=7DcoAAAAYAAJ" target="_blank">cautioned</a> against "a social tyranny more formidable than many kinds of political oppression," or BR Ambedkar <a href="https://books.google.co.in/books?id=Eio8BQAAQBAJ&amp;pg" target="_blank">argued</a> (in a slightly different context) that "political tyranny is nothing compared to social tyranny," they could just as easily have been speaking in 2016 as in 1787, 1859, or 1936. Democrats around the world may not yet be married to the mob, but plenty have been betrothed.</p><p>None of this should be interpreted as some kind of nostalgia for an older, simpler world. That world was not necessarily simpler, but it was more <a href="http://www.amazon.in/Better-Angels-Our-Nature-Violence/dp/0143122010" target="_blank">violent and chaotic, prejudiced and unfair</a>, and <a href="http://www.amazon.in/Great-Escape-Health-Origins-Inequality/dp/0691165629" target="_blank">poor and backward</a>. It may be hard to discern amid the smoke and noise, but there are some benefits to digital democracy. Information is no longer in the hands of the few.</p><p>It is easier than ever to bring injustices to light. And the same process can throw up mainstream leaders from backgrounds that are far from privileged, such as a <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/politics/wp/2015/05/26/heres-how-the-first-president-of-the-social-media-age-has-chosen-to-connect-with-americans/" target="_blank">Barack Obama</a>, <a href="http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2014/12/01/quiet-german" target="_blank">Angela Merkel</a>, or <a href="https://books.google.co.in/books?id=sJUfAwAAQBAJ&amp;pg=PT54#v=onepage&amp;q&amp;f=false" target="_blank">Narendra Modi</a>. Two of the three, Obama and Modi, rose to power on the backs of unprecedented social media movements.</p><p>But representative democracy as we have come to know it is under threat, and Brexit represents the first major casualty. Rather than fight the tide, a collective rethink is needed about how to make democracies resilient and productive in the digital age. It won't be easy.</p></div>    <div class="margin-top">        <h3>NOW WATCH: <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/the-us-navy-just-flexed-its-muscles-in-the-worlds-most-contested-region-2016-6">The US Navy just flexed its muscles in the world's most contested region</a></h3>        <div>            <div>        <div class="ooyala-video-player" data-video-autoplay="false" data-video-id="pjZ21hNDE68K5rW-eqJMqAdR3UKOkBx3" data-player-variable="ooyalapopvideo" id="ooyalaplayer_popvideo" style="width:1280px;height:720px"></div>        </div>        </div>            </div>

The Brexit is the first major casualty of digital democracy

The entire list and a brief profile of 'Delhi ke nirmata'⁠— the makers of Delhi felicitated at Kejriwal's oath taking ceremony

Apple, Amazon, Google, and hundreds of businesses vowed to meet Paris climate goals on their own 'in the absence of leadership from Washington'

<p><div class="KonaFilter image-container"><div class="image on-image"><p class="source">REUTERS/Aung Hla Tun </p><p class="caption">A <keyword id="16488" type="UNKNOWN" weightage="60" keywordseo="Jade">jade</keyword> merchant inspects the most valuable jade lot that will be auctioned at the Mid-Year Emporium in Yangon November 13, 2007.</p></div><p></p></div></p>
<p>HPAKANT, Myanmar (Reuters) - Tin Tun picked all night through teetering heaps of rubble to find the palm-sized lump of jade he now holds in his hand. He hopes it will make him a fortune. It's happened before.</p>
<p>"Last year I found a stone worth 50 million kyat," he said, trekking past the craters and slag heaps of this notorious jade-mining region in northwest Myanmar. That's about $50,000 - and it was more than enough money for Tin Tun, 38, to buy land and build a house in his home village.</p>
<p>But rare finds by small-time prospectors like Tin Tun pale next to the staggering wealth extracted on an industrial scale by Myanmar's military, the tycoons it helped enrich, and companies linked to the country where most jade ends up: China.</p>
<p>Almost half of all jade sales are "unofficial" - that is, spirited over the border into China with little or no formal taxation. This represents billions of dollars in lost revenues that could be spent on rebuilding a nation shattered by nearly half a century of military dictatorship.</p>
<p>Official statistics confirm these missing billions. Myanmar produced more than 43 million kg of jade in fiscal year 2011/12 (April to March). Even valued at a conservative $100 per kg, it was worth $4.3 billion. But official exports of jade that year stood at only $34 million.</p>
<p>Official Chinese statistics only deepen the mystery. China doesn't publicly report how much jade it imports from Myanmar. But jade is included in official imports of precious stones and metals, which in 2012 were worth $293 million - a figure still too small to explain where billions of dollars of Myanmar jade has gone.</p>
<p>Such squandered wealth symbolizes a wider challenge in Myanmar, an impoverished country whose natural resources - including oil, timber and precious metals - have long fueled armed conflicts while enriching only powerful individuals or groups. In a rare visit to the heart of Myanmar's secretive jade-mining industry in Hpakant, Reuters found an anarchic region where soldiers and ethnic rebels clash, and where mainland Chinese traders rub shoulders with heroin-fueled "handpickers" who are routinely buried alive while scavenging for stones.</p>
<p>Myint Aung, Myanmar's Minister of Mines, did not reply to written questions from Reuters about the jade industry's missing millions and social costs.</p>
<p>Since a reformist government took office in March 2011, Myanmar has pinned its economic hopes on the resumption of foreign aid and investment. Some economists argue, however, that Myanmar's prosperity and unity may depend upon claiming more revenue from raw materials.</p>
<p>There are few reliable estimates on total jade sales that include unofficial exports. The Harvard Ash Center, which advises Myanmar's quasi-civilian government, has possibly the best numbers available.</p>
<p>After sending researchers to the area this year, the Harvard Ash Center published a report in July that put sales of Burmese jade at about $8 billion in 2011. That's more than double the country's revenue from natural gas and nearly a sixth of its 2011 GDP.</p>
<p>"Practically nothing is going to the government," David Dapice, the report's co-author, told Reuters. "What you need is a modern system of public finance in which the government collects some part of the rents from mining this stuff."</p>
<h3>HIDING STONES</h3>
<p>Chinese have prized jade for its beauty and symbolism for millennia. Many believe wearing jade jewelry brings good fortune, prosperity and longevity. It is also viewed as an investment, a major factor driving China's appetite for Burmese jade. "Gold is valuable, but jade is priceless," runs an old Chinese saying.</p>
<p>Jade is not only high value but easy to transport. "Only the stones they cannot hide go to the emporiums," said Tin Soe, 53, a jade trader in Hpakant, referring to the official auctions held in Myanmar's capital of Naypyitaw.</p>
<p>The rest is smuggled by truck to China by so-called "jockeys" through territory belonging to either the Burmese military or the Kachin Independence Army (KIA), both of whom extract tolls. The All China Jade Trade Association, a state-linked industry group based in Beijing, declined repeated requests for an interview.</p>
<p>Hpakant lies in Kachin State, a rugged region sandwiched strategically between China and India. Nowhere on Earth does jade exist in such quantity and quality. "Open the ground, let the country abound," reads the sign outside the Hpakant offices of the Ministry of Mines.</p>
<p>In fact, few places better symbolize how little Myanmar benefits from its fabulous natural wealth. The road to Hpakant has pot-holes bigger than the four-wheel-drive cars that negotiate it. During the rainy season, it can take nine hours to reach from Myitkyina, the Kachin state capital 110 km (68 miles) away.</p>
<p>Non-Burmese are rarely granted official access to Hpakant, but taxi-drivers routinely take Chinese traders there for exorbitant fees, part of which goes to dispensing bribes at police and military checkpoints. The official reason for restricting access to Hpakant is security: the Burmese military and the Kachin Independence Army (KIA) have long vied for control of the road, which is said to be flanked with land-mines. But the restrictions also serve to reduce scrutiny of the industry's biggest players and its horrific social costs: the mass deaths of workers and some of the highest heroin addiction and HIV infection rates in Myanmar.</p>
<p>There are also "obvious" links between jade and conflict in Kachin State, said analyst Richard Horsey, a former United Nations senior official in Myanmar. A 17-year ceasefire between the military and the KIA ended when fighting erupted in June 2011. It has since displaced at least 100,000 people.</p>
<p>"Such vast revenues - in the hands of both sides - have certainly fed into the conflict, helped fund insurgency, and will be a hugely complicating factor in building a sustainable peace economy," Horsey said.</p>
<p>The United States banned imports of jade, rubies and other Burmese gemstones in 2008 in a bid to cut off revenue to the military junta which then ruled Myanmar, also known as Burma. But soaring demand from neighboring China meant the ban had little effect. After Myanmar's reformist government took power, the United States scrapped or suspended almost all economic and political sanctions - but not the ban on jade and rubies. It was renewed by the White House on August 7 in a sign that Myanmar's anarchic jade industry remains a throwback to an era of dictatorship. The U.S. Department of the Treasury included the industry in activities that "contribute to human rights abuses or undermine Burma's democratic reform process."</p>
<p>Foreign companies are not permitted to extract jade. But mining is capital intensive, and it is an open secret that most of the 20 or so largest operations in Hpakant are owned by Chinese companies or their proxies, say gem traders and other industry insiders in Kachin State. "Of course, some (profit) goes to the government," said Yup Zaw Hkawng, chairman of Jadeland Myanmar, the most prominent Kachin mining company in Hpakant. "But mostly it goes into the pockets of Chinese families and the families of the former (Burmese) government."</p>
<p>Other players include the Union of Myanmar Economic Holdings Ltd (UMEHL), the investment arm of the country's much-feared military, and Burmese tycoons such as Zaw Zaw, chairman of Max Myanmar, who made their fortunes collaborating with the former junta.</p>
<p><div class="KonaFilter image-container"><div class="image on-image"><p class="source">REUTERS/Minzayar </p><p class="caption">Hand-pickers search for jade through rubble dumped by mining companies at a jade mine in Hpakant township, Kachin State July 8, 2013.</p></div><p></p></div></p>
<h3>THE CHINA CONNECTION</h3>
<p>Soldiers guard the big mining companies and sometimes shoot in the air to scare off small-time prospectors. "We run like crazy when we see them," said Tin Tun, the handpicker.</p>
<p>UMEHL is notoriously tight-lipped about its operations. "Stop bothering us," Major Myint Oo, chief of human resources at UMEHL's head office in downtown Yangon, told Reuters. "You can't just come in here and meet our superiors. This is a military company. Some matters must be kept secret."</p>
<p>This arrangement, whereby Chinese companies exploit natural resources with military help, is both familiar and deeply controversial in Myanmar.</p>
<p>Last year, protests outside the Letpadaung copper mine in northwest Myanmar triggered a violent police crackdown. The mine's two operators - UMEHL and Myanmar Wanbao, a unit of Chinese weapons manufacturer China North Industries Corp - shared most of the profits, leaving the government with just 4 percent. That contract was revised in July in an apparent attempt to appease public anger. The government now gets 51 percent of the profits, while UMEHL and Myanmar Wanbao get 30 and 19 percent respectively.</p>
<p>China's domination of the jade trade could feed into a wider resentment over its exploitation of Myanmar's natural wealth. A Chinese-led plan to build a $3.6 million dam at the Irrawaddy River's source in Kachin State - and send most of the power it generated to Yunnan Province - was suspended in 2011 by President Thein Sein amid popular outrage.</p>
<p>The national and local governments should also get a greater share of Kachin State's natural wealth, say analysts and activists. That includes gold, timber and hydropower, but especially jade.</p>
<p>A two-week auction held in the capital Naypyitaw in June sold a record-breaking $2.6 billion in jade and gems. But jade tax revenue in 2011 amounted to only 20 percent of the official sales. Add in all the "unofficial" sales outside of the emporium, and Harvard calculates an effective tax rate of about 7 percent on all Burmese jade.</p>
<p>It is, on the other hand, highly lucrative for the mining companies, whose estimated cost of production is $400 a ton, compared with an official sales figure of $126,000 a ton, the report said.</p>
<p>"Kachin, and by extension Myanmar, cannot be peaceful and politically stable without some equitable sharing of resource revenues with the local people," said analyst Horsey.</p>
<h3>THE PECKING ORDER</h3>
<p>At the top of the pecking order in Hpakant are cashed-up traders from China, who buy stones displayed on so-called "jade tables" in Hpakant tea-shops. The tables are run by middleman called laoban ("boss" in Chinese), who are often ethnic Chinese. They buy jade from, and sometimes employ, handpickers like Tin Tun.</p>
<p>The handpickers are at the bottom of the heap - literally. They swarm in their hundreds across mountains of rubble dumped by the mining companies. It is perilous work, especially when banks and slag heaps are destabilized by monsoon rain. Landslides routinely swallow 10 or 20 men at a time, said Too Aung, 30, a handpicker from the Kachin town of Bhamo.</p>
<p>"Sometimes we can't even dig out their bodies," he said. "We don't know where to look."</p>
<p>In 2002, at least a thousand people were killed when flood waters inundated a mine, Jadeland Myanmar chairman Yup Zaw Hkawng told Reuters. Deaths are common but routinely concealed by companies eager to avoid suspending operations, he said.</p>
<p>The boom in Hpakant's population coincided with an exponential rise in opium production in Myanmar, the world's second-largest producer after Afghanistan. Its derivative, heroin, is cheap and widely available in Kachin State, and Hpakant's workforce seems to run on it.</p>
<p>About half the handpickers use heroin, while others rely on opium or alcohol, said Tin Soe, 53, a jade trader and a local leader of the opposition National League for Democracy party. "It's very rare to find someone who doesn't do any of these," he said.</p>
<p>Official figures on heroin use in Hpakant are hard to get. The few foreign aid workers operating in the area, mostly working with drug users, declined comment for fear of upsetting relations with the Myanmar government. But health workers say privately about 40 percent of injecting drug users in Hpakant are HIV positive - twice the national average.</p>
<p>Drug use is so intrinsic to jade mining that "shooting galleries" operate openly in Hpakant, with workers often exchanging lumps of jade for hits of heroin.</p>
<p>Soe Moe, 39, came to Hpakant in 1992. Three years later, he was sniffing heroin, then injecting it. His habit now devours his earnings as a handpicker. "When I'm on (heroin), I feel happier and more energetic. I work better," he said. The shooting gallery he frequents accommodates hundreds of users. "The place is so busy it's like a festival," he said. Soe Moe said he didn't fear arrest, because the gallery owners paid off the police.</p>
<h3>MOVING MOUNTAINS</h3>
<p>Twenty years ago, Hpakant was controlled by KIA insurgents who for a modest fee granted access to small prospectors. Four people with iron picks could live off the jade harvested from a small plot of land, said Yitnang Ze Lum of the Myanmar Gems and Jewellery Entrepreneurs Association (MGJEA) in Myitkyina.</p>
<p>A 1994 ceasefire brought most of Hpakant back under government control, and large-scale extraction began, with hundreds of backhoes, earthmovers and trucks working around the clock. "Now even a mountain lasts only three months," said Yitnang Ze Lum.</p>
<p>Many Kachin businessmen, unable to compete in terms of capital or technology, were shut out of the industry. Non-Kachin workers poured in from across Myanmar, looking for jobs and hoping to strike it rich.</p>
<p>The mines were closed in mid-2012 when the conflict flared up again. Myanmar's military shelled suspected KIA positions; the rebels retaliated with ambushes along the Hpakant road. Thousands of people were displaced.Jade production plunged to just 19.08 million kg in the 2012/13 fiscal year from 43.1 million kg the previous year. But the government forged a preliminary ceasefire with the Kachin rebels in May, and some traders predict Hpakant's mines will re-open when the monsoon ends in October.</p>
<p>When operations are in full swing, the road to Hpakant is clogged with vehicles bringing fuel in and jade out. Such is the scale and speed of modern extraction, said Yitnang Ze Lum, Hpakant's jade could be gone within 10 years.</p>
<p>"Every Kachin feels passionately that their state's resources are being taken away," a leading Myitkyina gem trader told Reuters on condition of anonymity. "But we're powerless to stop them."</p>
<p>(Andrew R.C. Marshall reported from Myitkyina; Min Zayar Oo reported from Hpakant; Additional reporting by Ben Blanchard in Beijing <a></a></p>

Myanmar's Old Guard Is Clinging To An $8 Billion Jade Empire

Johnson Controls Hitachi Air Conditioning India Ltd

You Searched For "Johnson Controls Hitachi Air Conditioning India Ltd" and got 4 results

The Brexit is the first major casualty of digital democracy

Dhruva Jaishankar, Brookings …

The entire list and a brief profile of 'Delhi ke nirmata'⁠— the makers of Delhi felicitated at Kejriwal's oath taking ceremony

BI India Bureau

Apple, Amazon, Google, and hundreds of businesses vowed to meet Paris climate goals on their own 'in the absence of leadership from Washington'

Biz Carson

Myanmar's Old Guard Is Clinging To An $8 Billion Jade Empire

Andrew R.C. Marshall and Min …