By David Pierson
China will hold live-fire military drills near its border with Myanmar starting on Tuesday, fortifying its boundaries with a southern neighbor that has been engulfed in a civil war for more than three years.
China’s People’s Liberation Army’s Southern Theater Command said on Monday that it would conduct both land and air exercises in the southwestern province of Yunnan to test the “joint strike capabilities of theater troops and maintain security and stability in the border areas.” China conducted two similar drills in April.
The patrols, which will last until Thursday, come less than two weeks after China’s top diplomat, Wang Yi, visited Naypyidaw, Myanmar’s capital, and reaffirmed Beijing’s support for the ruling military junta, which seized power in a coup in 2021. Analysts say that despite Mr. Wang’s pledge of support, Beijing is using the drills to send a signal to the junta that it would like the military to return to Chinese-led peace talks with rebels and refrain from intensifying the conflict.
Myanmar, a country of about 55 million long fractured by ethnic divisions, has been thrown into fresh chaos as the military resumed control. Thousands have been killed and tens of thousands detained by the junta, which has been accused of committing atrocities and killing civilians by bombarding the country with airstrikes.
The junta’s violence has led to the emergence of a resistance movement made up of both civilians from Myanmar’s urban areas who had become rebels and battle-hardened insurgents in the border regions who have been fighting for autonomy for decades. Together, they control about two-thirds of the country, mostly along its frontiers, while the military government holds the major cities located in the central lowlands of the Irrawaddy Valley.
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Resistance forces have been on the offensive for months, putting the junta on the back foot outside its strongholds. Mounting losses in troops and territory led the junta to impose a mandatory draft earlier this year.
China has been growing uneasy about the conflict, which has drawn closer to its borders, disrupting trade and raising concerns about the safety of Chinese nationals. Earlier this month, rebel forces overran a regional military base less than 100 miles from the Chinese border.
Myanmar “plays a crucial role in the development of China’s southwestern economy and national security,” said Song Zhongping, an independent defense analyst based in Beijing and a former Chinese military officer. “China is very concerned about peace and stability in the region, and even more concerned about the security of our borders.”
At stake are China’s investments in Myanmar, including multibillion-dollar plans to build an economic corridor from southwestern China to the Indian Ocean so that Chinese trade can bypass the Strait of Malacca, a high-traffic waterway near Malaysia. In July, anti-junta rebels captured a Chinese-backed nickel-mining project in the north about 160 miles from Mandalay.
China’s strategy in Myanmar has been to play both sides, said Jason Tower, the Myanmar director at the United States Institute of Peace, a nonpartisan research organization funded by the U.S. Congress. China cultivates economic, military and diplomatic ties with the junta while providing weapons and other supplies to rebel groups along the border, he said.
China used that influence to call for negotiations last December between the junta and rebel groups near the border called the Three Brotherhood Alliance. Talks collapsed in May, Mr. Tower said.
The junta has been frustrated by Chinese aid to the rebels, sending supporters to protest Beijing outside the Chinese Embassy in Yangon, Myanmar’s former capital and its largest city, Mr. Tower said.
Earlier this month, after the regional military base fell, the junta leader, Senior Gen. Min Aung Hlaing, said that rebels were receiving arms, including drones and short-range missiles, from “foreign countries.” Though he did not name China, he said some arms and ammunition were coming from factories across the border with China. China is also a major supplier of weapons to the junta.
China needs to hedge because it is unclear who will ultimately hold power in Myanmar, said Ja Ian Chong, an associate professor of political science at the National University of Singapore.
“Beijing wants stability and influence. They aren’t particularly wedded to any one party or approach, it seems to me,” Mr. Chong said.
During Mr. Wang’s visit to Myanmar, he said he hoped that Myanmar would protect Chinese citizens and projects in the country, maintain stability along the border, and work with China on cracking down on cross-border crimes.
In China’s view, the junta appears too weak to consolidate power, and the rebels too disparate to form a unity government, Mr. Tower said.
China is probably concerned that the junta may step up airstrikes on rebels near the Chinese border, where the regime has virtually no presence on the ground. “If the junta wants to recover some of the territory it lost, it will resort to using heavy airstrikes in the border areas,” Mr. Tower said. “That is a sensitive issue for China.”