Introduction
Road linking Burma (Myanmar) with southwestern China opened in 1938
This article is about the Sino-Burmese road. For the 1948 Siege of Jerusalem, see Burma Road (Israel). For Japanese-built wartime railroad in Southeast Asia, see Burma Railway.
Burma RoadTraditional Chinese滇緬公路Simplified Chinese滇缅公路Literal meaningYunnan–Burma HighwayTranscriptionsStandard MandarinHanyu PinyinDiān Miǎn gōnglù
Transportation of Allied Forces in Burma and southwestern China including the Burma Road
The Ledo Road extension "Twenty-Four Bends" (25.821725°N, 105.202600°E), often mistaken for a segment of the Burma Road, is actually in Qinglong County, Guizhou Province. During the Second Sino-Japanese War, Western supplies carried over the Burma Road first arrived at Kunming, the capital of Yunnan province, then traveled over mountain roads, such as the "24 Bends," passing through cities such as Guiyang, the capital of Guizhou province, before continuing to Chongqing.
Burmese and Chinese laborers using hand tools to reopen the Burma Road in 1944
The Burma Road (Chinese: 滇缅公路) was a road linking Burma (now known as Myanmar) with southwest China. Its terminals were Lashio, Burma, in the south and Kunming, China, the capital of Yunnan province in the north. It was built in 1937–1938 while Burma was a British colony to convey supplies to China during the Second Sino-Japanese War. Preventing the flow of supplies on the road helped motivate the occupation of Burma by the Empire of Japan in 1942 during World War II. Use of the road was restored to the Allies in 1945 after the completion of the Ledo Road. Some parts of the old road are still visible today.
History
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The road is 717 miles (1,154 km) long and runs through rough mountain country. The sections from Kunming to the Burmese border were built by 200,000 Burmese and Chinese laborers during the Second Sino-Japanese War in 1937 and completed by 1938 in order to circumvent the Japanese blockade of China.
The construction project was coordinated by Chih-Ping Chen.
Burma Road (Operational October 18, 1938)
Modern Name
Imperial/Historical Name
Feature Type
Lashio
Lashio (British Burma)
Terminus
Wanding
Wanting (romanized)
Border Crossing
Longling
Lungling
City
Huitong Bridge
Huitongqiao
Bridge (Salween River)
Baoshan
Paoshan
City
Gongguo Bridge
Gongguoqiao
Bridge ("Lancang" Chinese river name, "Mekong" international)
Dali
Tali-Fu
City
Chuxiong
Tsuyung
City
Kunming
Yunnan-Fu
Terminus
During World War II, the Allies used the Burma Road to transport materiel to aid China's war effort, especially after China lost the most efficient route for supplies to reach the Chinese interior via Nanning on November 24, 1939 in the Battle of South Guangxi and later French Indochina (September 1940). Supplies from San Francisco for example would land at Rangoon (now Yangon), moved by rail to Lashio where the road started in Burma, up steep gradients before crossing into China over the Wanding bridge. The Chinese stretch of the road continued for some five hundred miles through rural Yunnan terrain before ending up in Kunming.
In July 1940, Britain yielded to Japanese diplomatic pressure and closed the Burma Road for three months.: 299  The Japanese overran Burma in 1942, closing the Burma Road. The Allies thereafter supplied China by air, flying "over The Hump" from India, which initially proved fatally dangerous and woefully inadequate, leading U.S. army general Joseph Stilwell to obsessively pursue the goal of reopening the Burma Road.
The Allies recaptured northern Burma in late 1944, which allowed the Ledo Road from Ledo to connect to the old Burma Road at Wanding, Yunnan province. The first trucks reached the Chinese frontier by this route on January 28, 1945. The first convoy reached Kunming on February 4, 1945.
In media
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Burma Convoy (1941)
A Yank on the Burma Road (1942)
Bombs over Burma (1942)
Objective, Burma! (1945)
The construction of the road also features in The Battle of China (1944), the sixth film of Frank Capra's Why We Fight propaganda film series. And the 1941 film Kukan.
In the grand strategy video game Hearts of Iron IV (2016), Close/reopen the Burma Road is a set of decisions the player can take.
