After a year of tentative ties with Myanmar’s democratic opposition, China this month dropped all pretension of hedging its bets and ramped up support for the military regime. Beijing framed its decisive economic and political move in part as a response to the “Ukraine crisis,” hinting that Russian backing for the junta may wane on the heels of Moscow’s stumbles in Ukraine, forcing China to fill the gap. With China bringing increasing pressure on Southeast Asian states to follow its lead in legitimizing Myanmar’s dictatorship, all parties in the region, and those with interests in it, will have to rethink their Myanmar strategies.
This is the assessment of Jason Tower in a story out this week entitled: “Ukraine Crisis Prompts China to Swing Behind Myanmar’s Junta” and published by the United States Institute of Peace (USIP).
Tower suggests China’s sudden shift in policy will almost certainly lead to escalating violence and instability in Myanmar, with concern from Beijing about how Russia’s embroilment in Ukraine is affecting Moscow’s outreach to Naypyidaw.
Myanmar’s National Unity Government (NUG), established by lawmakers deposed in last year’s coup, condemned China’s moves as “deeply disrespectful and offensive” to Myanmar’s people. For the United States, China’s enhanced support for a genocidal military regime at the heart of the Indo-Pacific region represents a direct threat to long-term regional commitments identified in the February 2022 Indo-Pacific Strategy. But for China, it seems that open cooperation with the regime now appeared necessary to rapidly reboot plans for tens of billions of dollars of strategic investments in Myanmar.
As the report notes, China was initially cautious in its response to the February 2021 coup in Myanmar, but attacks in March 2021 on Chinese factories and businesses across Yangon created a crisis. Chinese officials feared that a strong show of support for the junta might further inflame anti-China sentiment. To cool the situation, Beijing crafted careful policy statements emphasizing China’s friendly relations with the National League for Democracy Party (NLD), and stressing that China-Myanmar friendship is “open to all people of Myanmar.”
In the following months, the Chinese Embassy opened discreet channels of communication with the NUG, and the Chinese Communist Party re-activated its relationship with the NLD, inviting its leaders to attend a virtual gathering of South and Southeast Asian political parties.
The Chinese government also slowed economic activities in Myanmar, even freezing loans for new projects by state-owned enterprises, and warning all parties in the conflict to pay greater attention to securing Chinese investments.
But problems started to loom, the report says. Despite the overtures and hedging, as Chinese decisionmakers began to view the opposition as unlikely to win and potentially inimical to China’s interests, they leaned on China’s strategic partnership with Russia to achieve their political goals in Myanmar: counter Western sanctions and support for democracy and human rights; prevent deeper involvement by the U.N. Security Council and other international bodies in Myanmar’s periphery; and provide support to the military to weaken the democratic opposition.
By November 2021, China was alarmed that the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) was challenging the junta’s legitimacy and China’s regional influence by blocking Myanmar’s participation in the “ASEAN-China Special Summit to Commemorate the 30th Anniversary of ASEAN-China Dialogue Relations.” References to the NLD disappeared from official Chinese statements, and China resumed all working level exchanges with the coup regime. Beijing went so far as to have its ambassador essentially apologize to the junta for failing to persuade key ASEAN states to include the military’s representatives in the meeting.
While strengthening ties with the junta, China has maintained, and often tightened, its traditional links with the northern ethnic armed organizations (EAOs), particularly the most powerful ones. Beijing has showered these groups with COVID-19 assistance, and in the case of Shan State, is standing with the northern EAOs near the Chinese border as they successfully press a military campaign against a rival ethnic army — the Shan State Army South. As a sign of respect for the EAOs, China sent a senior official to Shan State in late March for the funeral of a key former leader of one of these groups — Peng Jiasheng, the founder of the Kokang Army, also known as the Myanmar National Democratic Alliance Army. Peng had also been instrumental in the expansion of several of Myanmar’s most powerful EAOs, including the powerful Arakan Army, whose leader also attended the funeral.
In short, China is making itself critical to all of Myanmar’s most powerful military actors. The junta, dependent on China, is surrounded by well-armed EAOs in China’s orbit, all of which are gaining in influence and power as the military’s violent campaign against the pro-democracy forces continues. This has given these EAOs strong incentives to support the armed resistance against the military, and many are now training and even arming people’s defense forces.
As the report notes, Chinese leaders believe this web of involvements creates leverage to best advance China’s interests – yet this is a dangerous strategy.
To be sure, China may pressure EAOs to stop supporting pro-democracy forces and recognize the junta. But this will prove problematic. First, this turns a blind eye to the key driver of the current crisis — decades of military oppression and attacks on the population, the most recent iteration of which has displaced more than 600,000 people since February 2021. Second, EAO constituencies have unequivocally rejected military rule, and turning to support the military will ultimately undermine their legitimacy.
All this is problematic for Beijing. In the end, China is likely to find that increased support for the junta will simply amplify anti-China sentiment, putting its hundreds of billions of dollars of strategic investment at greater risk. By propping up an illegitimate regime, China further sets the stage for protracted conflict.
What is clear is that China’s recent moves represent a growing threat to peace and democracy at the heart of the Indo-Pacific region. While its violence and urgency may not match Russia’s assault on Ukraine, Myanmar’s democratic opposition sees the parallels. Its leaders have already started calling on the United States and other Western states to dramatically increase their support, worried that Russia’s
war on Ukraine will leave their struggle, and that of their regional counterparts for peace and democracy, forgotten at a critical moment, the report says.
As Western states help Ukraine meet an existential threat, it is critical that they not ignore China’s moves in Southeast Asia.
As an immediate step, the United States could encourage much higher levels of support from its QUAD partners to bolster democracy as a pillar of regional security. Another measure would be for the United States and its allies to look for more creative ways to assist the full range of opposition actors in Myanmar - especially key EAOs supporting the NUG.
Finally, Washington might communicate clearly to China the dangers its strategy presents to regional stability and offer to establish high-level exchanges on the crisis to manage tensions between the two powers as efforts to restore democracy continue, the report concludes.
NOTE: The full USIP report can be found here: https://www.usip.org/publications/2022/04/ukraine-crisis-prompts-china-s...
