Myint Myint Kyu’s study explores the results of government administrative decentralization in the Myanmar’s Kokang Self-Administered Zone along the Myanmar-China border. This move has created an array of unique political, cultural, and economic ‘spaces of exception’ within this part of the country. The author’s research reveals how local people have adapted various strategies to sustain their livelihoods—from opium cultivation to small-scale trade and the informal economic sector, including drug trafficking, smuggling, and gambling along the porous border between Myanmar and China, its neighbor to the north.