"Myanmar’s dependence on China is easy to see. Brightly colored Chinese company signs and billboards are prominent, Chinese-looking businessmen stroll along the streets of Yangon, Myanmar’s largest city, and Chinese tourists seem to be everywhere. While I was visiting, a Chinese crew happened to be filming in Yangon, disrupting traffic and causing general confusion. Native residents looked resigned, their expressions appearing to say that there was nothing they could do. Where Chinese influence is most pervasive, however, is not in the city but in a region populated by ethnic minorities far from Yangon. I went to see for myself, traveling by plane from Yangon via Mandalay to make my way to Myitkyina in Myanmar’s northernmost state of Kachin which shares a long border with China’s Yunnan Province. There, I found China’s local activities a disturbing reality for the people who live there..."