David Scott Mathieson
China’s role in Myanmar, given the regime’s bloody and brutal campaign to quell a rebellion against its February 2021 coup against a democratically elected government, is the region’s most pivotal, as a significant arms supplier and the great power neighbor with major economic and strategic interests. Yet Beijing’s Myanmar policy is in no way clear cut, rational or measurable, let alone predictable.
It is not accurate to claim China has ‘changed sides’ from the rebel Three Brotherhood Alliance (3BA to the junta’s State Administration Council. These complex relations are too deeply opaque for a simplistic formula. There is what China officially states and then what it does on the ground, often in contradiction, and these are almost always confounding to outsiders, confusing for Myanmar actors, and in constant collision between long-term strategic interests and short-term dynamics.
Nearly a year ago, China appeared to give significant support for Operation 1027, a stunning military operation spearheaded by the 3BA, which is made up of the Myanmar National Democratic Alliance Army (MNDAA), the Ta-ang National Liberation Army (TNLA), and the Arakan Army (AA). That the operation also targeted scam centers along the border, which China had called for, made this ‘support’ transactional, not ideological. Following more than two months of intensive fighting and significant territorial losses for the Myanmar military, Chinese officials called Myanmar officials and representatives of the 3BA to Yunnan and brokered a peace deal called the ‘Hiageng Agreement’ in January. Fighting may have reduced, but it didn’t fully subside, and the military’s State Administration Council forces breached the agreement on an almost daily basis.
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