English (United Kingdom)

https://curated-unify.zendy.io/wp-json/zendy-region/v1/featured_content/oa?rat=en

https://curated-unify.zendy.io/wp-json/zendy-region/v1/highlighted_journal/

Global: Zendy Plus annual

Presents the access of premium content as premium feature

Premium Content

Presents the keyphrase highlighting as premium feature

Keyphrase Highlighting

Presents the summarisation as premium feature

Summarisation

Insights

Presents the pdf analysis as premium feature

PDF Analysis

Presents the zaia usage as premium feature

ZAIA

Global: Zendy Tools annual

Global: Zendy Free Plan

Global: Zendy Tools monthly

Global: Zendy Plus monthly

As a component of illicit globalization, smuggling has loomed large in international political economy in recent years. The question of sovereignty is at the forefront of the discussion because smugglers make efforts to evade state regulations and thus jeopardize sovereign power. This paper examines the operation of commodity smuggling between China and Myanmar and discusses major factors that facilitate this business. Another objective is to explore antismuggling initiatives launched by the Chinese state to exercise its sovereignty over cross-border commodity flows. The study case is the Ruili (China)-Muse (Myanmar) border crossing, where smuggling has been an essential component of cross-border networks for decades. Increased smuggling does not infer the Chinese state as weak or failing, but reveals the illicit side of globalization that operates in parallel with trade liberalization and economic integration. Nevertheless, border control is not in vain, but draws on antismuggling campaigns to push informal economies to become formalized, and safeguards national sovereignty at the border. This article presents new material on the complexity of trade governance in one of Asia’s most isolated borderlands, and contributes to theoretical debates on the articulation of effective sovereignty in relation to illicit globalization.

Smuggling and the exercise of effective sovereignty at the China-Myanmar border