Yang Xiancai () founded the state Xingdahu () in 1739 in and around Ta Shwe Htan. The name was changed to Kokang by his successors. In 1840, the Yunnan governor granted the Yang clan the hereditary rights as a Tusi of the Qing dynasty. After the British conquest of Upper Burma in 1885, Kokang was initially placed in China under the 1894 Sino-British boundary convention. It was ceded to British Burma in a supplementary agreement signed in February 1897.