Khun Sa was born to a Chinese father and a Shan mother. He adopted the pseudonym Khun Sa, meaning "Prince Prosperous". In his youth he trained with the Kuomintang, which had fled into the border regions of Burma from Yunnan upon its defeat in the Chinese Civil War, and eventually went to form his own army of a few hundred men. In 1963 he re-formed it into a Ka Kwe Ye local militia loyal to Gen Ne Win's Burmese government. Ka Kwe Ye received money, uniforms and weapons in return for fighting the Shan rebels.