Dragon in the Golden Triangle: military operations of the people’s liberation army in Northern Burma, 1960–1961

ABSTRACT Towards the end of the Chinese Civil War, contingents of Chinese Nationalist Party/Kuomintang (KMT) soldiers escaped to an area of Burma that would later be known as the Golden Triangle. They expanded into a significant armed presence. Burma, the Republic of China, the People’s Republic of China, and the United States were subsequently embroiled in this decade-long KMT Issue. A joint Sino-Burmese military campaign between late 1960 and early 1961 finally ended the KMT Issue. This article, primarily based on PRC sources, reconstructs how the PRC understood, conceived, organised and evaluated this campaign.