The real winner in Myanmar’s civil war is China
It doesn’t want to fix the war-torn country but is fine managing it
WHEN MIN AUNG HLAING, then chief of Myanmar’s army, led a coup in February 2021, China called it “a major cabinet reshuffle”. On June 16th Xi Jinping, China’s leader, needed no euphemisms to justify meeting Mr Min Aung Hlaing on his first visit to Beijing as Myanmar’s president. It was a clear political endorsement from China of a sham election in December and January—held during a civil war with no big opposition parties and won overwhelmingly by an army-backed party.
Mr Min Aung Hlaing will have relished being welcomed as a head of state, as he was earlier this month in India. The election has not fully ended his status as the pariah leader of a pariah regime. But he is making progress. The regional club, the Association of South-East Asian Nations, still bars him from its summits, but is split between members that want to continue to shut out his junta and those tempted to make moves to accommodate it.
America, which once led the campaign to isolate him, has drifted into indifference. A year ago, the junta was delighted by a letter from Donald Trump threatening Myanmar with tariffs of 40% on its exports, because it named the general and so could be taken as implicit recognition of him. Since, America has quietly lifted sanctions on several of his cronies. Meanwhile, the feeding of USAID, America’s aid agency, into the woodchipper has forced ordinary people in Myanmar to rely on the junta’s hospitals and news outlets.
The regime has leant on a narrow set of patrons: Russia and China for diplomatic cover at the United Nations, as well as aircraft, the fuel to fly them, and drones and drone-jamming kit, lending it a technological advantage in the civil war; China and Thailand for revenues from exports of Myanmar’s natural gas.
China is Myanmar’s largest foreign investor. In return, the generals offer what China wants: access to the Indian Ocean, allowing Chinese trade to bypass the potential choke-point of the Malacca Strait. Relations are transactional. Over the past year China has used its sway over powerful rebel groups on the shared border to help the junta. Several have signed ceasefire agreements and handed territory to the army. Not all the battlefield gains can be attributed to China’s help—a conscription drive begun in 2024 has swelled the army’s ranks past 100,000.
The junta has pushed forward across the country, taking towns in northern Sagaing province in April and May. As the rainy season begins, the army will almost certainly advance further, says Anthony Davis, a security analyst who studies the conflict. Its troops are moving towards trading posts in areas currently controlled by rebels along Myanmar’s borders with India, Thailand and China.
This is ominous for the Kachin Independence Army (KIA), an ethnic armed organisation that controls much of northern Myanmar but not Myitkyina, capital of Kachin state. Together Myanmar and China produce around 90% of the world’s heavy rare earths, says Jason Bedford of the East Asia Institute at the National University of Singapore. Nearly half of the world’s supply of these elements, used in electric vehicles, defence technology and satellites, comes from KIA-controlled mines. The ore is then shipped to China for processing.
China has long been pragmatic in its dealings with Myanmar, control of which is splintered between the junta, the KIA and other rebel groups, each dependent on Chinese markets, weapons routes and goodwill. China is the indispensable broker to all of them. It can exert pressure on the KIA by threatening to stop buying its rare earths or jade, by choking the routes through which it buys weapons, or by detaining leaders who live on the Chinese side of the border. And it can put pressure on the junta through the very trade and investment Mr Min Aung Hlaing went to China to court.
This leverage is not the same as control. Myanmar remains a low priority in the Chinese Communist Party’s global calculations—an irritating border problem to manage, not a project to finish. China wants the rare earths flowing, its pipelines and railways open and a south-western frontier stable enough to stem the spillage of refugees, drugs and scams across it. It does not need a unified Myanmar for any of that; it needs a Myanmar where it is the one party that every side must deal with.
Mr Min Aung Hlaing was accompanied to Beijing by the chief ministers of Kachin and Shan states, which abut China, suggesting the visit focused on border trade, including rare earths, and restarting Myitsone dam, a $3.6bn Chinese project in Kachin that has been frozen since 2011 after a public outcry.
China’s reach into Myanmar is more than just commercial. It is increasingly shaping not just what comes out of the ground inside the country but what can be known and said about it internationally. On June 3rd China detained Min Zin, a prominent Myanmar-born scholar of Myanmar politics, while he was visiting Kunming, a city in southern China. An American citizen, Mr Min Zin was accused of espionage. His detention may be more to do with China’s relations with America than with China doing the junta a favour by silencing a leading critic. But the episode has sent a chill through the community of academics and others who study China and Myanmar. As China’s grip on Myanmar tightens, both regimes are becoming harder than ever to understand. ■