After retiring from the Australian Public Service and joining the Griffith Asia Institute in 2006, my first major research project was a paper examining the widely accepted claim that China had established a “massive” signals intelligence collection station on Myanmar's Great Coco Island, in the Andaman Sea. This paper was later revised and published as an article in the journal Asian Security. However, the audience for such academic works was rather limited, prompting a shorter piece on the subject in The Irrawaddy, a dissident journal specializing in Myanmar that enjoyed a wide circulation.

For almost 15 years, there has been a steady stream of newspaper stories, scholarly monographs and books that have referred inter alia to a large Chinese signals intelligence (SIGINT) station on Burma's Great Coco Island, in the Andaman Sea. Yet it would now appear that there is no such base on this island, nor ever has been. The explosion of this myth highlights the dearth of reliable information about strategic developments in Burma since the creation of the State Law and Order Restoration Council (SLORC) in 1988.

The Great Coco Island mystery seems to stem from a report issued by the Kyodo News Agency on 17 September 1992. Citing diplomatic sources in Beijing, Kyodo claimed that China was building a radar facility on Burma's Coco islands, under a secret agreement with the SLORC. The Kyodo report was picked up by Reuter's the next day, and repeated in the US newspaper The Estimate the following week. From there, the story quickly found its way into a wide range of newspapers and military journals.

Questioned about the Kyodo report, the Chinese Foreign Ministry flatly denied it. When asked to make a comment, the SLORC declined either to confirm or deny the report. On 22 October, however, The Estimate published a follow-up story citing a “highly-placed, knowledgeable US military source”, who stated that Chinese personnel had been seen on Hainggyi Island in the Irrawaddy delta, where another secret base was believed to be under construction. The Great Coco Island facility was mentioned in the same context.