Operations have started to clear thousands of land mines from a section of the Sino-Vietnamese border, with the aim of safeguarding lives, freeing up large amounts of land for local farmers and boosting living standards, as Xu Wei reports from Malipo county, Yunnan province. The area in the southeast of Yunnan province, close to the Sino-Vietnamese border, was a major battleground during a series of border conflicts between the two countries that flared up sporadically from the late 1970s to 1989. Tens of thousands of mines were left behind when the fighting finally ended. Read more
