China deploys jets and warns of 'resolute measures' after Myanmese bombs kill four Chinese

By Ryan Kilpatrick, March 16, 2015

Central Military Commission vice chairman Fan Changlong, the second most powerful man in the armed forces, issued a warning to Yangoon yesterday after Myanmar's military bombed a Chinese village, killing four Chinese citizens on PRC sovereign territory and injuring another nine.

Fan advised Myanmar to "seriously control" its military, which is currently fighting an insurgency by ethnic Han rebels along the border with China. If they fail to do so, Fan warned that the “Chinese military will take resolute measures to protect the safety of Chinese people and their assets.”

Additionally, the People's Liberation Army Air Force has dispatched jets to the Kokang border region to “track, monitor, warn and chase away” Myanmar jets.

After the failed 8888 Uprising in 1988, Myanmar's military dictatorship made a series of concessions to China in exchange for the arms needed to modernize the country's armed forces and crush the student-led movement, while Beijing agreed to cease funding the Communist Party of Burma, which continues to operate insurgent armies along the PRC border.

Ties between the two neighbors have become strained recently, however, as fighting along the border with Yunnan has spiraled out of control. Last week, over 30,000 ethnic Chinese refugees from Myanmar crossed into the southwestern province.

Yangoon has accused Beijing of aiding and abetting insurgents, which some PLA officers have indeed been found guilty of. Earlier this month, a senior strategist at the Chinese Academy of Military Science was found to have offered intelligence and leaked state secrets to ethnic Chinese rebels in Myanmar,

Should a repeat of last week's incident occur in the region, Fan's stern words may lock China into a course of retaliatory military action.