Myanmar Rebel Leader Has Been Detained in China, Report Says

Sebastian Strangio

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Commanders of the Myanmar National Democratic Alliance Army (MNDAA), including the group’s commander Peng Daxun (left), take part in a meeting during a visit to territories controlled by the United Wa State Army in Shan State, Myanmar, January 24, 2024.Credit: Facebook/The Kokang

Chinese authorities have reportedly detained the leader of the Myanmar National Democratic Alliance Army (MNDAA), which has inflicted serious losses on Myanmar’s military junta, in an apparent bid to halt the group’s offensives.

Citing sources in both Myanmar and China’s Yunnan Province, Myanmar Now reported yesterday that the MNDAA’s commander Peng Daxun is being held under house arrest in China. Peng (aka Peng Deren) was summoned to Yunnan for a meeting with a senior Chinese envoy late last month and then placed in custody. The report said that Peng has been allowed to remain in phone contact with his commanders inside Myanmar.

The MNDAA is a key member of the Three Brotherhood Alliance of resistance groups, which has captured a large amount of territory in Shan State since the launch of its Operation 1027 offensive in October 2023. In January, the MNDAA took back the ethnic Chinese-dominated Kokang region, from which the Myanmar military expelled it in 2009, and overran a number of border crossings with China. Then, in early August, it seized Lashio, the de facto capital of northern Shan State and the seat of the Myanmar military’s Northeast Regional Command.

In a subsequent report, RFA Burmese quoted one source as saying that the Chinese government is holding Peng in a bid to force him to “negotiate withdrawal of his troops from Lashio.”

While the first phase of the Operation 1027 offensive proceeded with China’s apparent approval, in large part because the MNDAA promised to shut down the online scam operations that had been set up by a junta proxy force in the Kokang region, China opposed the resumption in June of the offensive, which broke a ceasefire that it helped to negotiate in Kunming in January. Since the fall of Lashio, China has put increasing pressure on the MNDAA and the rest of the Three Brotherhood Alliance to end their offensive operations and open talks with the military junta.