Background
Bao Youxiang was born in 1949 to a Wa chieftain in Kunma, a Wa village near Gawng Language, in northern Shan State.
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Bao Youxiang
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Career
Bao was the second youngest of eight brothers in his family, and did not go further than his village during his childhood. When Bao was 21, he joined and eventually led a Wa guerrilla group that smuggled opium into China through its border with Myanmar. Communist Party of Burma (1969-1989)
Bao joined the armed wing of the Communist Party of Burma (CPB) in 1969, and started out as a battalion commander for his home village of Kumna, but gradually became the leader of a brigade operating near the Thai-Myanmar border.
Like many Wa villagers in the area at the time, Bao saw the CPB as a source of modern weaponry, combat training, and fraternity.
In 1989, the leadership of the CPB was challenged by several party members, resulting in an internal rebellion that ended with the disbandment of the armed wing of the CPB and the establishment of various new factions, including the United Wa State Army, which Bao would eventually lead. United Wa State Party/Army (1989–present)
After the fall of the armed wing of the CPB, Bao joined the United Wa State Party (UWSP), and its armed wing, the United Wa State Army (UWSA).
In 1995, Bao was elected chairman of the UWSP and commander-in-chief of the UWSA, after Zhao Nyi-Lai, the first and preceding chairman, suffered a stroke. Bao has been the de facto President of Wa State since 1995, an autonomous entity in northern Shan State that runs independently from Myanmar.
He has constantly urged the government of Myanmar to give more regional autonomy to ethnic minority groups in Myanmar (Burma), in exchange for permanent ceasefire and peace agreements with armed insurgent groups.
