In the twentieth century, Yunnan offered its own heroes to the Communist Revolution and the nature of its resistance to external control differed little from resistance to earlier rulers. When Communist cadres spread the news of victory in the Civil War to the tribespeople living on the Burmese border, they were surprised to be used as human sacrifices used to fertilise the soil. Meanwhile, thousands of Chiang Kai-Shek's Kuomintang troops crossed the border into Northern Thailand, where they were permitted to stay in return for occasional military assistance to the Thai government. These movements of people intensified the strength and depth of cross-border trade networks involving Yunnan as the frontier of China. The presence of the KMT sympathizers now lent an additional motivation for maintaining the secrecy of these trade deals.
The decades following the Communist victory saw Yunnan largely cut off from mainland Southeast Asia, because of the closing of borders. Some border trade did continue, as indeed did some illegal trade but this was suppressed to some extent by the central government. Maoism stressed internal resources as a means of economic development and this meant few contacts with the rest of the world were necessary. One episode which did see external contact and which was related to Yunnan was the Sino-Vietnamese War of 1979, which led to the deaths of tens of thousands of people (Zhang, 2005). This brief but destructive war increased tensions between China and her neighbours, which were particularly high in those neighbours which felt themselves to be threatened internally by domestic Communist sympathizers, such as Thailand.
Somewhat paradoxically, 1979 was the same year in which Deng Xiaoping instituted the Open Door Policy which led to the emergence of a quasi-capitalist economic system coming into force alongside the monolithic Communist political system. Central planning remains important in the economic world and the open economy was first permitted in several Special Economic Zones (SEZs) concentrated on the southern coastal areas. The SEZ policy has been enormously successful and has led to the creation of a massive manufacturing base which has drawn in huge foreign and domestic investment as well as creating new classes of economically empowered elites.
In addition to the SEZ creation, the Open Door Policy also allowed for various forms of fiscal reform and investment policy, together with the changes made to the eastern provinces (Aksornsri, 2006). The very success of the policy led to further problems of growing income inequality and the creation of major slum areas surrounding areas where jobs have been created. Consequently, attempts were made to balance this growth by launching first the "Go West" policy and, more recently, the Northwest emphasis policy. It was the "Go West" policy which helped to stimulate development in Yunnan and elsewhere, as well as providing further incentives for Han Chinese to migrate to the province.
