Pheung Kya-Shin

   (Peng Jiasheng, 1931- )

   A Kokang Chinese who fought in Jimmy Yang's Kokang Revolutionary Force against the Ne Win regime in the 1960s but went with his younger brother Pheung Kya-fu (Peng Jiafu) to the People's Republic of China and, in 1968, returned as commander of the Kokang People's Liberation Army, which merged with the armed forces of the Communist Party of Burma. Serving as Kokang's civil administrator, he was active in the opium trade since at least the early 1970s. In early 1989, Pheung initiated a mutiny against the CPB leadership that resulted in the dissolution of the party. He signed a cease-fire with the State Law and Order Restoration Council, and his armed force, now legalized in the eyes of the military regime, became known as the Myanmar National Democratic Alliance Army/Party. Pheung has been a major figure in Burma's post-1988 drug economy, responsible for a rapid expansion of opium and heroin exports, although he was driven out of Kokang in 1992 by a rival, Yang Molian, a scion of Kokang's ruling Yang clan. By the late 1990s, however, he had reasserted his position as the territory's most powerful warlord and cooperated closely with the State Peace and Development Council.

   See also Lo Hsing-Han.