China’s Support for the Junta
In Myanmar, the GSI provides a screen behind which China can manipulate various conflict actors to protect its interests and to create a perception that the military cannot be removed from politics without damaging regional security. The Chinese government claims that its cooperation with Myanmar aims to promote peace, tranquility and the development of border areas. Yet China has continued hundreds of millions of dollars exports of arms and military equipment to the Myanmar military since the coup. These actions suggest that China does not respect the Myanmar people’s struggle to fight against a brutal military regime that commits war crimes. This cynical, self-interested approach promotes the junta’s security at the expense of the Myanmar’s people.
The Myanmar junta is a source of both domestic and regional insecurity. Since the February 2021 coup, Myanmar’s people have suffered from the junta’s oppression and suppression, including airstrikes, the burning and torching of villages, and killing and shooting sprees carried out by the junta forces. For human security to flourish in Myanmar, its people will need to be safe from such violence. This means that the junta must be removed from politics and replaced by a strong federal democratic system that safeguards human rights and security.
Recent developments in China-Myanmar relations have further demonstrated that the Chinese government ignores human security perspectives and humanitarian considerations. For example, following clashes on the China-Myanmar border along Myanmar’s northern Kachin State, China shut down all border crossings linked to territories controlled by the Kachin Independence Organization (KIO), even though Myanmar people were trying to flee into China for safety. This is one of the tactics that China has used to put pressure on the KIO and its military wing, the Kachin Independence Army (KIA), as the KIA has continued fighting against the military and captured the border towns controlled by the junta-allied Border Guard Force (BGF). The KIA responded with its own border closure disrupting rare earth imports to China. But later both sides reopened the border, demonstrating that China prioritizes its business interests.
China has officially raised its concerns over the latest developments in Myanmar and demanded that the resistance protect Chinese interests. With resistance forces gaining momentum and the junta losing more and more military posts and major cities and towns, Beijing asked for a cease-fire and the junta and China moved to establish a joint security company. Ostensibly, the company would protect Chinese investments, but there are legitimate concerns over the way that a junta-allied company might free up junta resources to deploy to the front lines. These are well-founded suspicions considering the role played by state-sponsored security companies in conflict hotspots in Africa and the Middle East.
China has asserted that a junta-run election is the only way forward. When junta leader Min Aung Hlaing made his first trip post-coup trip to China in November 2024, China pledged that it would support such an election. However, China appears concerned that the resistance’s military advances are paving the way for a strong federal democratic state that is more aligned with Western democratic and human rights values. Yet, its GSI promises to “respect the development paths and social systems independently chosen by the people of all countries.”
Resistance Forces on the Move
Since the 2021 coup, the Myanmar people’s revolutionary movements, in collaboration with ethnic armed organizations (EAOs), have made major gains against the junta, particularly in the last two years. Although China seemingly approved of the Three Brotherhood Alliance’s October 2023 Operation 1027 to crack down on online gambling, it does not want such military advances to inspire similar attacks by resistance forces in other parts of the country. (The Three Brotherhood Alliance is made up of three EAOs: the Myanmar Nationalities Democratic Alliance Army (MNDAA), the Ta’ang National Liberation Army (TNLA), and the Arakan Army (AA).)
Early in 2024, China attempted to stop the momentum of Operation 1027 and facilitated peace negotiations resulting in the Haigeng Agreement. Despite this, the second round of the operation resumed on June 25, 2024. In just over two weeks after the resumption, allied forces including, People’s Defense Forces (PDFs) under the command of the National Unity Government (NUG) and the Three Brotherhood Alliance have seized over 80 junta bases in northern Shan State and northern Mandalay Region. In July 2024, they took control of Singu township including the seizure of a junta base at a Chinese-backed joint venture, the Alpha Cement Factory, and a People’s Defense Force took control of the Tagaung nickel processing plant, a multi-million dollar Chinese investment in the Sagaing region.
Karenni joint forces have formed alliances with the Karenni Army and urban guerrilla forces and PDFs that have been carrying out attacks on junta posts since Operation 1111 was launched in November 2023. Meanwhile, the AA has made major advancements on the Rakhine battlefront, seizing major military base areas in the region. The AA and its allies have recently extended operations from Rakhine State into the Ayeyarwady Region.
The junta has also lost significant numbers of military posts in northern Kachin State since the KIA launched Operation 10307 in March 2024. The Karen National Liberation Army and PDF allied forces have also been attacking junta forces along the Asian Highway, which links Kawkareik with Myawaddy, a trade hub in Karen State along Thailand’s border.
China’s Interference
Concerned that these advances will result in either long-term instability or even the collapse of the military regime, China is increasingly involving itself in the internal affairs of the country, which violates the principle of non-interference espoused in the GSI. It pushed the TNLA and MNDAA to stop fighting by closing border crossings and cutting off supplies of critical goods, also warning that further punitive action will follow if they do not oblige.
The MNDAA, seemingly under mounting pressure from China, released a statement saying that it will not take its offensive beyond Lashio and will not cooperate militarily or politically with NUG. This pressure on EAOs indicates China’s concerns that they are increasingly aligning with the perceived Western-allied NUG and PDFs, which China sees as hostile to its interests. For its part, the NUG has sought to reassure Beijing that it will safeguard its interests.
The Chinese Embassy has said that Beijing does not interfere in Myanmar’s internal affairs. But China’s support for the junta has only become more visible recently, suggesting that its vision for Myanmar is one of a weak and fragmented country with just enough stability to protect Beijing’s strategic economic interests. But China’s increasing cooperation with the military has only worsened the already deteriorating security conditions in the country. When Soe Win, the deputy general of the junta, was in Beijing in early July, reports emerged that large amounts of Chinese weaponry were exported to Myanmar. The junta has also sought cooperation with high-tech drone manufacturers in China and Chinese jet fighters have recently been sent to the military. Furthermore, the junta’s generals and the Chinese military have discussed accelerating cooperation and joint military training.
All of this has emboldened the junta, which has escalated deadly airstrikes on territories lost to EAOs, targeting civilian areas including towns, schools, bazaars and camps for internally displaced persons. China’s support of the junta has also enabled the pro-military Karen BGF to cover up and expand the scam industry operated by Chinese syndicates. The criminal gangs curbed by Operation 1027 have shifted their bases to Karen State and further south. Thousands of Myanmar nationals who fled to the Karen borderlands to escape military conscription have been subjected to forced criminality. This not only endangers the security of people in Myanmar, but also the security of the Southeast Asia and other regions including the United States, Europe and Africa. Hundreds of thousands have been trafficked to work in scam centers at the border town in Myanmar.
Although China may be attempting through the GSI to narrow the scope of security to the state, the U.N. charter — which the GSI commits to respect — has enshrined the concept of human security. Chinese authorities need to recognize that the Myanmar military has been the source of human insecurity in the country, with subsequent implications for regional security. What China needs to recognize is that a peaceful and stable Myanmar with a federal democratic system best serves its interests along with those of the Myanmar people, neighboring countries and global security more broadly.
Phyu Hnin is an independent analyst and researcher working on conflict in Myanmar. This name is a pseudonym used by the author for privacy reasons.
source : usip