Virtual Jingpo: A Jingpo/Kachin Techno-community?

The Jingpo/Kachin, a trans-national ethnic group, whose traditional homeland has been cut through by international boundaries thus scattering the group on the margins of three nation-states – Burma, China and India – still share many common cultural characteristics. Recently, stark economic differences between China and Burma, as well as different political agendas on both sides of the border have started to differentiate Chinese Jingpo from Burmese Kachin, who now identify themselves as citizens of the nation-state they inhabit.

 In recent years, globalization as well as the apparition of new technological mediums, such as the Internet, have spread exponentially around the world, reaching places as remote as the Dehong Dai Jingpo Autonomous Prefecture, in the Chinese province of Yunnan. Until a few decades ago, the representation of ethnic identity was solely in the hands of the Chinese Communist Party. But these new technologies have brought changes in the representation of ethnic groups, enabling them to voice their own identity. The representations of a group such as the Jingpo/Kachin on the Internet are multiple and further emphasise the growing gap created by economic and political differences on each side of the border. The over representation of Burmese Kachin on the Internet and the under representation of their Chinese counterparts prove that in the ‘virtual’ world the growing divergence between Jingpo and Kachin is expanding.

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