By Xinhua writers Quan Xiaoshu, Yang Yueping KUNMING, June 27 (Xinhuanet) -- In east Myanmar's state of Shan, where opium poppies planted all over mountains and plains have made it a top source of drugs, an anti-drug elementary school has been established with assistance from Chinese police.

Pupils take not only common courses but also drug-prevention classes in the school. "Chinese police have helped instill in our kids' an anti-drug consciousness," said a teacher, adding that theclassrooms funded by the public security department of the Jinghong City, southwest China's Yunnan Province, are now the tidiest and most beautiful buildings in their village.

Experts consider it a more mature step in China's anti-drug cooperation with countries in the great Mekong sub-region, including Myanmar, Thailand, Laos and Vietnam.

China established an anti-drug cooperative partnership with these countries in the 1990s, signing a series of agreements with them either on long-term anti-drug plans or on cooperative campaigns to hunt for drug traffickers.

Since 2002, the Yunnan Police Officer Academy, authorized by the National Narcotics Control Commission (NNCC), has helped Laos and Myanmar train 175 anti-drug policemen in six groups. Teachers with the academy also went to the two countries to offer training for 280 local policemen.

Meanwhile, Yunnan policemen have cooperated successfully with their counterparts in Myanmar, Laos, Vietnam and Thailand in solving more than 30 cases, in which 664 suspects, 542 kilograms of drugs, and a large batch of weapons and ammunition were seized and 16 overseas drug processing plants were closed.

Also pushed by the Chinese side, more and more opium planters in the notorious "Golden Triangle" of Myanmar, Thailand and Laos, have chosen to plant rice, sugarcane and rubber as an alternative to growing opium poppies.

Though drugs were once the "black barrier" hindering economic cooperation among countries in the greater Mekong sub-region, anti-drug fighting and replacement planting have grown to be the most successful cooperation activities in non-traditional security fields in the region, said Liu Zhi, a researcher with the southeast Asia research institute in the Yunnan Academy of Social Sciences.

In the 1990s, with support from the central government, southwest China's Yunnan Province, a major channel of drugs from the Golden Triangle area, began to help local opium planters replace poppies with legal plants in the major opium planting areas of neighboring countries.

So far, Yunnan has invested 500 million yuan (60 million US dollars) in the replacement planting scheme, providing farmers in Myanmar and north Laos with over 100 tons of grain and commercial crop seeds.

The province has also sent more than 3,000 technicians to help local farmers plant more than 40,000 hectares of paddy rice, sugarcane, rubber, fruits and vegetables, reducing at least 100 tons of opium.

The northern areas of Laos, a major opium production base with an annual planting acreage up to over 13,333 hectares, have seen half of the opium fields replaced by other safe crops.

"China's support has greatly promoted the disappearance of opium poppies in Lao's northern region," said Chansada Sonnasinn, deputy director of the Academic Affair Department Faculty of Economics and Management National University of Laos.

To encourage domestic companies to invest in the replacement planting scheme, China has issued a series of preferential policies, including removing the import duty of goods produced as alternatives to opium poppies.

So far, nearly 100 Chinese companies have invested millions of US dollars in the scheme, which has for the first time brought poor farmers in the "Golden Triangle" stable incomes and made themcapable of feeding themselves.

Thanks to the successful operation of the Chinese companies, more investment from the government has gone to the improvement ofroads and traffic, water facilities, tourism, culture and education, according to NNCC.