Trading Places

A heinous act of wanton slaughter, committed on 5 October 2011, dominated Chinese news for months. Two Chinese cargo ships were found adrift on the Mekong River, a major trade route for China, near the Thai-Burmese border, with 13 Chinese crew members brutally killed, summarily stabbed or shot with their hands bound behind their backs and their mutilated bodies dumped in the water.

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The suspected mastermind of the massacre was quickly named by the Chinese: Naw Kham, the Burmese leader of the largest drug trafficking gang in the so-called Golden Triangle [...] . A major manhunt for Naw Kham ensued [but] it proved exceedingly difficult to find him because he was hiding in the vast mountainous jungles of Laos.

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On at least three occasions when the Chinese were convinced they had located him, they were unable to secure the cooperation of government and local police officials quickly enough or overcome the protection of local villagers, who engaged in firefights with police forces trying to apprehend him. That enabled Naw Kham to disappear across the border into the jungle of Myanmar.

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The Global Times noted that "some analysts had even said the hunt for Naw Kham could be as difficult as the hunt for Bin Laden."

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As a result of these obstacles, the Global Times reported back in February, China seriously considered using a drone strike in Myanmar to kill him: "an unmanned aircraft to carry 20 kilograms of TNT to bomb the area". That option was rejected because, the report said, the Chinese were intent on capturing him alive and trying him in court.

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In April of last year, the Laotian police, acting in concert with the Chinese, apprehended him as he attempted to flee.

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"Mr. Liu, whose antinarcotics bureau runs a fleet of unarmed drones for surveillance in China's border areas, insisted that the idea [of a drone targeted killing] was shelved because of legal restraints."

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"'We didn't use China's military, and we didn't harm a single foreign citizen,' [said Mr. Liu].”

  Glen Greenwald

We opened ourselves up to this - other countries that we decry for their human rights abuses and lawlessness showing the rest of the world that they are more concerned with those things than we are.  Of course, as long as we have the baddest military and weaponry on the planet, I guess we don't have to care what the rest of the world thinks.