Last week I mentioned a new report that highlights the links between the Burmese jade trade and the Beijing Olympics. The Kachin News Group has helpfully kept on the story. They report:
…Kachin jade merchants in Ying Jiang and Ruili (Shweli) in Yunnan, and Guangzhou told KNG [Kachin News Group] today that they believe that the jade in medals of the Beijing Olympic Games are from Phakant in Kachin State in Northern Burma. It is not true that the Olympic medal jade is from China’s Qinghai province as the Chinese government has claimed.
This is a big claim. Unfortunately I don’t have the requisite expertise to say (but reasonably good quality pictures of some medal designs are available here and here…perhaps a jade expert among us could offer an informed assessment. For non-experts, this brief guide to jade identification may also come in handy.)
In my time hanging around the jade industry I have regularly heard disparaging comments about China’s local jade. Kachin jade traders delight in the exquisite quality of their raw materials and trumpet the unique beauty of the jade mined in northern Burma.
The Chinese authorities are adamant that jadeite nephrite from Qinghai has been used, and their claims have been accepted by the 08-08-88 for Burma group and All Kachin Student and Youth Union that launched the original Blood Jade report. That Chinese jade is, in fact, part of the Olympic medals seems highly probable…but is there something more to the claims of the (admittedly anonymous) Kachin jade merchants? As many readers know, it is the gear from northern Burma that gets the really high prices and is most esteemed by Chinese buyers.
Now I don’t want to get too silly (or too far ahead of myself) but given the recent US law that “bans the import of Burmese jadeite” I am wondering — if someone could prove that the Olympic medals are, in fact, partly made from Burmese jade – whether there would be problems getting them into the US? With his haul of gold (and jade) could Michael Phelps be accused of breaking the newly toughened sanctions policy? Surely not.
The whole thing is murky, the evidence is clearly incomplete, and I am not really convinced that the jade in the medals comes from Burma. And I’m certain that if they could find sufficiently robust raw materials then the Chinese Olympic officials, with national pride in mind, would have opted for local jade.
But what if, for the obvious reason, that was not possible? I expect many New Mandala readers would love to know more.
3 responses so far ↓
1 aiontay // Aug 15, 2008 at 1:17 pm
I thought jadeite was only found in Burma and Central America. Nephrite, the other stone known as jade, is the one found in China as well as other countries.
2 Lee Jones // Aug 15, 2008 at 6:46 pm
Nick, some people are so desperate to bash China right now that they will make anything up. Absolutely everything Beijing does is being subjected to the most minute scrutiny by pompous Western journalists in the hope that it will screw up. I think that, especially under such circumstances, anonymous claims like this have to be treated with the scepticism they deserve.
3 Frank A. Doonan // Jan 13, 2009 at 12:27 pm
I am a geologist and have studied and collected jade for 40 years beginning in Central America. I first noticed a problem with the jade on the medals from the pictures. Some called the stone nephrite The white jade for the 1st prize had a distinct jadeite appearance, so I began to do more research, and found that there are indeed records of Qinghai buying a large amount of white/clearish jadeite from Burma.
Jadeite is also found in Siberia Canada and Guatemala at least.
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