Geoeconomics or Ethnopolitics?
It is widely known that the focus of Chinese foreign policy is economics. Economic power determines hopes and fears for China’s dominance in the 21st century. At first glance, economicocentrism should reduce the belligerence of the state, since annexations and interventions are bad for profits. In practice, however, this means a transition to more veiled methods of intervention in the affairs of victim countries. For some, it is paradoxical, but for others, it is natural that Chinese communism has mastered the foreign policy tools of the Belle Epoque with its capitalist expansion and colonial conquests.
With the exception of Taiwan, which Beijing views as a territory temporarily separatist-held, China has no territorial claims on its neighbors. Even during the time of Zhou Enlai, China settled most of its border disputes with its neighbors, except for India, which defended the McMahon Line. None of China’s neighbors have significant Han populations in their border areas, which deprives Beijing of grounds for “irredentism” based on ethnicity. The only exception is Myanmar.
The case of Myanmar is extremely important for the analysis of Chinese diplomacy, since along with the overriding economic interest, China’s pressure on this country is guided by the idea of the unity of the Han people on both sides of the border. Myanmar, torn apart by civil war, is twice a victim of Chinese intervention: first, as a platform for geo-economic exploitation (logistics routes, pumping out resources, including rare earth materials); second, as a country with a noticeable Han (Kokang) population sympathetic to the “Motherland.”
Three Narratives on the Civil War in Myanmar
There is a wealth of evidence that China supports the anti-government rebels of the Northern Shan (weapons, money, mercenaries, intelligence, and, finally, tacit approval of their actions). But why hasn’t the Kokang Han rebellion become a pretext for condemning Beijing on the same grounds that Moscow’s steps to support pro-Russian forces in Crimea and Donbas in 2014-2022 served as a pretext for imposing sanctions against Russia? To understand the logic of the media and the expert community, we must keep in mind three narratives about the civil war in Myanmar.
1. The narrative of the Myanmar opposition and the West. According to it, the “fascist Burmese junta” carried out an illegal coup and overthrew the democratic government, which caused justified resistance from the people. All ethnic groups in Myanmar hate the “junta,” they are all waging an armed struggle in a single impulse, without making mutual claims against each other. Apologists of the “Spring Revolution” exclude the possibility of the “Balkanization” of Myanmar, deliberately downplaying the degree of friction between different ethnic groups.
Of course, this narrative is characterized by the thesis of the eternal confrontation between “democracy” and “authoritarianism,” so China, as an authoritarian (or totalitarian) state, automatically fits into the “allies of the junta.” No one asks why the communist and imperialist Beijing should sincerely support the military government of Myanmar, which is guided by conservative-nationalist and religious Buddhist principles. In the dogmatic framework of liberal fundamentalism, no one is going to delve into such nuances as the difference between Myanmar’s populist democracy (NLD) and the classical democratic systems of Europe and America, or even more so to clarify the difference between the authoritarian regimes of Myanmar and China, which in the 20th century were actually on the brink of war due to the CPC’s support for the communist insurgency in Burma.
When cases of cooperation between pro-Chinese insurgents (Three Brotherhood Alliance) and the Chinese authorities cannot be hidden, theories about the “complete independence of MNDAA/TNLA/AA from China” and even “the challenge that ethnic armed organizations (EAOs) pose to Chinese neocolonialism” (sic!) are introduced.
The demonization of the “Burmese junta” has long since crossed the boundaries of adequate analysis: if Pyongyang and Beijing, and especially the Venezuelan and Cuban regimes, Hamas and the pro-Iranian “axis of resistance” in the West will find their own – and quite resonant – advocates, then the Tatmadaw is portrayed as “absolute evil” and an “army of darkness” without the slightest chance of hearing an alternative point of view on the civil war in Myanmar. Some American experts are even promoting détente with China for the sake of destroying the “fascist junta,” which already looks absurd against the backdrop of the new Cold War.
Thus, the strategy of the liberal media boils down to deliberately ignoring the links between the rebels and China, because revealing this link will negatively affect the credibility of the National Unity Government (NUG) in the United States. Nothing will shake the image of the “Spring Revolution” more than the simple idea that the victory of the “resistance” is beneficial not to the West, but to China, and that the “revolutionaries” – even if unconsciously – play into the hands of the CCP. The NUG is forced to maneuver between the need to lobby its interests in the American establishment and the real needs of the People’s Defense Forces (PDF) and other “revolutionary armies” that receive weapons from groups linked to Beijing. This is why, after 4 years of conflict, no one in the Western expert community has expressed the “heretical” idea that normalizing relations with the Myanmar military could be a more effective way to confront the totalitarian PRC in Southeast Asia.
2. China’s narrative. Chinese strategic thinking is fundamentally different from Western thinking. Winning a war for the Chinese means winning it before hostilities start, and preferably without hostilities at all. It is naive to believe that the State Administration Council (SAC) should somehow suit Beijing more than the government led by the National League for Democracy (NLD), simply because of the “natural attraction” of dictatorships to each other. Experience shows that the NLD and Daw Aung San Suu Kyi personally were more preferable business partners for the Chinese than the intractable, superstitious and nationalistic military. But knowing the realities of Myanmar well, Beijing chose not to break with the SAC as the country’s main stakeholder after the 2021 coup. The absurd NUG media campaign in the Western media, aimed at fomenting chaos, has convinced the Chinese of the need to remain neutral. Undoubtedly, “neutrality” in the understanding of the opposition media and in the understanding of China are two completely different concepts. A handshake between any, even the most insignificant, Chinese official and a Tatmadaw representative was interpreted as “Chinese interference on the side of the junta” – this is not only an illogical conclusion, but also evidence that Myanmar radicals are fatally lacking in understanding the basics of Chinese strategy.
The Chinese media environment is not particularly rich in materials devoted to Myanmar. Censorship and the absence of non-state media in the communist one-party regime also affect the coverage of the conflict. At the level of official statements, China diligently creates an image of itself as a peacemaker, without which the parties to the conflict cannot make any acceptable decision. The arrogant attitude towards Myanmar as a tributary follows from China’s “state autism,” which Edward Luttwak wrote about. Nevertheless, despite the Sinophobic attitudes of grassroots activists from among the Myanmar exiles, China has still not declared the NUG its enemy.
Hoping to extract long-term benefits from the economic enslavement of a weak neighbor, Beijing does not want to attract unnecessary attention to its Myanmar policy. However, many ordinary Chinese, especially in Yunnan Province, do not hide their sympathies for the MNDAA, considering them fighters for the Han Cause. Propaganda videos from the Kokang rebels are widely circulated on the social media platform WeChat.
3. The Myanmar military narrative. The military’s arguments are the hardest to summarize because, paradoxically, the SAC is the only party to the conflict that has been stubbornly unwilling to communicate its position to the world. The Burmese sense of pride and honor conflicts with the need to explain one’s actions to others. The constitutionalist arguments used to justify the removal of the NLD government in February 2021 are too complex for the general public. In foreign policy, the military understands the obvious: no matter how much the Burmese nationalists may resent the Chinese Red Dragon, the stability of their government depends more on the goodwill of Beijing than on the West. We have heard a string of anti-China statements from the Tatmadaw during the Kokang clashes in 2015, during the first phase of Operation 1027 in late 2023 and early 2024, and immediately after the fall of Lashio in August 2024. At the same time, the SAC understands that to publicly declare to the world that China is interfering on behalf of the MNDAA would further incite China against Myanmar.
Simply put, the military risks nothing by blaming the US – after all, the US (at least under the Biden administration) is already biased against Myanmar; by attacking China, the military risks losing Pyin Oo Lwin in addition to Lashio. Moreover, SAC apparently considers the strategy of pitting Beijing against the EAOs for their cooperation with the “pro-American” NUG to be a clever one. Experience shows that the EAOs easily justify themselves to China and skillfully parry such accusations – and this raises the question of whether it is time for SAC to cast aside its fears and thoroughly reconsider its relations with its manipulative neighbor.
The MNDAA Case: Han Chinese Irredentists Lead the “Resistance”
China’s pivot from geoeconomics to ethnopolitics is best illustrated by its support for the Myanmar National Democratic Alliance Army (MNDAA). The EAO, along with its sister UWSA, is perhaps the most powerful not only in Shan State but in all of Myanmar; it coordinates with other groups, including those commonly considered “pro-Western.” For example, during Operation 1027, the Karenni Nationalities Defence Force (KNDF), a favorite of American humanitarian and Christian organizations like the Free Burma Rangers, coordinated with the MNDAA leadership. Even after the MNDAA announced its refusal to deal with the NUG, the PDF’s supply of China-made weapons and disguised recruits (who now wear Mandalay’s PDF patches) appears to continue. One can even assume that some level of secret cooperation between the MNDAA and the “pro-Western opposition” is beneficial to Beijing – the main thing is that this cooperation leads to a weakening of the central government, but not so much that power falls into the hands of the NUG.
The Chinese problem in Myanmar has a long history. The first Chinese settlers appeared on the frontier of the Burmese kingdoms in the 17th century, when the Ming armies, defeated by Manchu invaders, sought a new home. They settled in the territory now known as Kokang or “Shan State Special Region 1.” The north of Shan State is linked to the Chinese province of Yunnan by many cultural and economic ties.
During World War II, the Chinese of Kokang demonstrated Chinese patriotism by establishing contacts with Chiang Kai-shek’s army to resist the Japanese. A new influx of Chinese settlers came in 1950, when the Kuomintang army, retreating in the footsteps of the Ming supporters, entered the territory of the Union of Burma, which was not considered a “serious” state by Chinese nationalists. Kuomintang rule was characterized by cruelty and oppression of the Shan, Kachin and Burmese populations. The tacit support of the US for the invaders led to Burmese disillusionment with Washington’s policies – the democratic government of U Nu in Rangoon did not expect that the leader of the Free World would encourage intervention, especially in conditions when the Burmese armed forces were fighting a common enemy – the Burmese Communist Party (BCP).
After the withdrawal of the Kuomintang troops in the 1960s, the Chinese factor acquired not an ethnic but an ideological coloring – since the PRC supported not so much the local Han as the local Communist Party with its Burmese nomenklatura. The Kokang Chinese – like other minorities fighting in the Burmese PLA – were forced to mimic Marxist ideology and formally submit to the “Red Burmese” trusted by Beijing. But after the collapse of the BCP in 1989, the Kokang (Han), Wa and others got rid of the need to repeat communist slogans and began to create “national (quasi-)states” based on the drug business.
Since the 17th century, we have seen a genetic continuity of Chinese insurgency in northeastern Myanmar: what was started by Ming loyalists was continued by the Han nationalists of the Kuomintang, then taken up by the Marxist guerrillas of the BCP and from them inherited by the ethnic separatists of the MNDAA.
A popular song among MNDAA supporters, Kokang Lament, contains explicit lines: “Oh Mother (China), my most beloved mother! Three centuries of drifting cannot detach me from you! How can you bear see me trampled into mud by thugs? Everyone knows I am the son forced from your home. Mother, only you can end this historic tragedy.”
The evidence of Chinese involvement in MNDAA is clear. At a Tatmadaw conference on the Kokang clashes in February 2015, Lieutenant General Myat Tun Oo spoke of Chinese nationals among the insurgents. In Yunnan, there was open recruitment of PLA veterans and sympathizers of the Kokang cause. Apparently, the PLA views the northern Shan as a testing ground for combat skills. This is supported by information about the fates of Chinese citizens – former MNDAA insurgents. It is known for certain about the Chinese “volunteer” of the Russian army Zhao Rui, who died in Ukraine and previously fought for the MNDAA since 2013. The obituary reports that Zhao Rui headed an organization of Chinese veterans of the “revolutionary troops,” and also that he is not the only PLA/MNDAA veteran who went to the Russian-Ukrainian war. Most likely, these combatants are somehow connected with the Chinese special services.
It is surprising that experts have completely ignored the topic of Chinese mercenaries’ participation in battles against the Tatmadaw, starting at least since 2013. This is even more strange, given the groundless hype about the alleged dispatch of Chinese PMCs to Myanmar to protect Chinese infrastructure (the Myanmar constitution prohibits the deployment of any foreign armed forces on the country’s territory).
Hostages of Geopolitics: The Impossibility of “Pro-Western” EAOs
Some American analysts, having realized the illusory nature of “liberated territories” under the control of the NUG, have come to the idea that it is preferable to rely on EAOs. The next stop in this logical chain should be the idea that any EAO is ultimately unsuitable for advancing US interests, for the reason that all ethnic armies are doomed to be vassals of Beijing due to the harsh laws of geopolitics.
The periphery of Myanmar belongs to the macro-region of “Zomia,” together with the appendix of the Indian “seven sisters,” northern Thailand, Laos and southwest China. The features of the social and economic structure of “Zomia” are described in detail in the works of the anthropologist James Scott. These are predominantly semi-nomadic (now sedentary) mountain tribes, whose economy is based on the slash-and-burn method and whose diet includes root crops. To define the permanent nature of “Zomia,” Scott uses the expression “flight from the state,” which is understood as the distancing of organically anarchic communities from rice-growing centralized civilizations. In the 20th century, the Burmese state failed to subjugate all the territories recognized by international law for the Rangoon government. The technical capabilities of the 21st century, however, already make globalization inevitable. The question is, which state will take over “Zomia”? Will it be Myanmar, often seen as a “failed state,” or hyper-centralized, AI-powered China?
Of course, it is in the interests of both the central government of Myanmar and the indigenous peoples of “Zomia” to smoothly consolidate under the auspices of a federal (albeit initially authoritarian) Burmese-centric (which is not the same as Burmese chauvinistic) state. The insurgent elites, accustomed to anarchy, have a different opinion – they want to preserve independence (i.e. the personal power of their dynasties), but at the same time earn good money (including from drug trafficking), which pushes them to an alliance with the regional and world leader – China. The warlords see Chinese capital as the locomotive that will ensure uninterrupted prosperity for local “kingdoms” without violating the absolutism of the ruling class. An agreement with Chinese communist businessmen is more profitable than an agreement with Myanmar generals, they naively believe.
For example, the Kachin Independence Army (KIA), often seen as “pro-Western,” is a member of the China-oriented Federal Political Negotiation and Consultative Committee (FPNCC) and a longtime ally of the pro-China AA, including in the drug trade. The rare earth deposits controlled by the KIA are destined to fall into Chinese hands – and they already have. The KIA leadership is more receptive to proposals from Beijing than to the voices of locals protesting against the pollution caused by the mines.
“Wa State” – a hypothetical target of the international coalition
However, China’s most reliable “trump card” in Myanmar is not the Kokang rebels, but the self-proclaimed “Wa State.” “Wa State” is essentially a “little China,” governed by a one-party model, led by the United Wa State Party (UWSP). Power in the “state” belongs to a sinicized elite that draws formal legitimacy from the nationalism of the Wa ethnic group. The United Wa State Army (UWSA), according to unanimous expert assessments, is the strongest EAO, which nevertheless maintains neutrality, but in practice helps its partners in the FNPNCC.
Since the start of the conflict in 2021, the UWSA has been using the complicated situation to increase its influence, a strategy that includes both arms sales and positioning itself as an arbiter due to its neutral status. During the first wave of Operation 1027, Wa State profited handsomely from the fact that the Tatmadaw considers the “neutral” UWSA to be the “lesser evil” compared to the MNDAA. In January 2024, the cities of Hopan and Panlong, which the military was not prepared to defend against the MNDAA, were handed over to UWSA. According to numerous reports from pro-military resources, UWSA soldiers participated en masse in battles on the side of the MNDAA and TNLA, including the capture of the North-East Command headquarters in Lashio in July-August 2024.
Naypyitaw understands the illusory nature of the UWSA’s “neutrality,” but does not want to set the powerful EAO against the significantly weakened Tatmadaw. In a speech on August 5, 2024, Min Aung Hlaing mentioned the destructive role of weapons and ammunition factories in the border areas, referring to production in the “Wa State.”
In this regard, the optimal and at the same time unexpected strategy for the SAC could be to internationalize the fight against the “Wa state” as the largest producer of drugs.
After the Taliban destroyed the heroin industry in Afghanistan, it was Myanmar – or rather its areas under the control of the rebels – that took first place in drug production. It makes sense to talk about “narco-separatism,” in which one or another group of insurgents establishes an authoritarian one-party regime “in the name of the people” and ensures its “prosperity” through drug trafficking. Previously, the rebels specialized in heroin, then switched to methamphetamine, in particular the drug ye ba. As we can see, the problem of the Golden Triangle at the junction of Thailand, Myanmar and Laos has not disappeared – but it cannot be solved without a radical change in the entire political landscape of the region. It is no longer possible to ignore the fact that the omnipotence of the warlords gives rise to drug trafficking, which, along with international terrorism, is considered a global threat. Samuel Huntington, author of the popular but misunderstood Clash of Civilizations (1996), envisioned the emergence of a global “barbarism” that would require the unification of all civilizations to counter.
The UWSA and its allies’ deep roots in the narco-economy, to the point that it is impossible to imagine these EAOs outside of drug trafficking, create the preconditions for the formation of an international coalition to finally eradicate this plague. Such a coalition could contribute to the democratization of Myanmar much better than the introduction of sanctions that are painful for the country’s population. It may be recalled that in 2005, the New York Field Division of the Drug Enforcement Administration (USA) brought an indictment against eight UWSA leaders from the Wei and Pao clans. This means that helping Myanmar subjugate the “Wa State” would be in the interests and laws of the United States, even if the anti-Chinese aspect of this operation is left out.
Conclusion
Part of the NUG strategy is to compare Myanmar to Syria, which is seen as a case of successful revolution. However, despite some similarities, the situations in the two countries are very different. The numerous shortcomings of the SAC regime cannot hide the fact that the generals are the founding fathers of modern Myanmar and no “revolutionaries” from the jungle can govern better than the current rulers. While the Syrian Arab Army relied on non-Sunni minorities (Alawites, Shiites, Druze) and had a narrow social base, the Tatmadaw has a foothold among the ethnic Burmese Buddhists who make up the majority of Myanmar’s population. Unlike the vicious Assad family with its greedy hangers-on, Myanmar’s generals understand what they are fighting for and have some intangible values. Friendly ties with Russia do not lead the SAC regime to invite incompetent Russian advisers, who have proven incapable of keeping the Assad regime from shameful collapsing. There is reason to believe that the Tatmadaw will overcome its current setbacks and, given favorable circumstances, will launch a counter-offensive.
While the pseudo-democratic extremists of NUG/PDF attack vital infrastructure (bridges, schools, factories, etc.), the Chinese boot continues to press on the Myanmar neck in northern Shan State, and the local population languishes under a tyrannical system that practices public executions, terror, anti-Buddhist blasphemy and ethnic cleansing.
To survive and keep the Union from falling apart, the Tatmadaw will have to be proactive and strike first. Military supporters are lobbying for airstrikes on the “Wa State” weapons factories that arm insurgents and terrorists across the country. The Tatmadaw could look to Croatia’s Operation Storm in 1995 and the Azerbaijani recapture of Nagorno-Karabakh in 2020 as models for defeating separatists. International involvement – due to the constitutional ban on foreign troops in Myanmar – could involve rearming the Tatmadaw along Western lines, sharing expertise and intelligence, including satellite imagery. The door should theoretically be left open for China to join in the operation to wipe out narco-separatists on its border. While Beijing’s behavior in the case of the US-Myanmar alliance is truly unpredictable, it would be a good idea to turn Sun Tzu’s strategy against China and strike where the enemy least expects it.