"China’s recent crackdowns on illegal cross-border trade from Myanmar are causing hardship for Myanmar merchants who make their living selling goods to Chinese buyers. Prior to Beijing’s closure of the black market routes, the merchants enjoyed fairly barrier-free movement of their goods into China, but now they face taxation as high as 60 percent, especially for high-traffic commodities like rice and other agricultural products. The effect has been particularly devastating at a rice wholesale center in Muse, a town that borders China in Myanmar’s Shan state. In days past, Chinese merchants used to crowd the facility, looking for rice they could buy cheaply, then sell for a healthy markup at home. But now the wholesale center is nearly deserted. Ko Sithu, a rice merchant at the center, to RFA’s Myanmar Service his business is drying up because tariffs made the grain less competitive. “When [the Chinese] raised taxes, the rice on this side wasn’t getting a good price any longer. It’s no longer [affordable] to bring it here. We are trying to sell off the rice [we have] here at their [lower offered] price, he said. Fruit restricted After rice, the second largest export at the Myanmar-China border is fruit. Under new import policies, some fruits, like pineapple, which had been traded freely for many years across the border, are now subject to restrictions..."