PRC prioritizes national interests over peaceful resolution in Myanmar

FORUM Staff

The Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) and Chinese government’s interests in war-torn Myanmar are largely self-serving. Since a military coup in February 2021 plunged the nation into chaos, the party’s support, which has included supplying military weapons, has fluctuated between the junta and the resistance movement, and sometimes to both simultaneously. The People’s Republic of China (PRC) generally favors the side — most often the junta, also called the Tatmadaw — that appears most likely to protect its considerable investments in the Southeast Asian country.

“[The PRC] is much more focused on securing its geostrategic interests, advancing its economic projects and checking Western influence in its frontier areas,” Jason Tower, Myanmar expert at the United States Institute of Peace (USIP), told The Irrawaddy newspaper in late March 2023. “I don’t think China really has a clear understanding which outcome it wants.” If Myanmar remains divided, Tower said, it is less likely to hold sway among neighboring countries, a scenario that might help the PRC control its interests with minimal interference.

Largely isolated by post-coup sanctions, Myanmar relies on the PRC as its primary trading partner. The countries share a 2,200-kilometer border that for decades has been the site of conflicts, trafficking networks and legal trade. (Pictured: A checkpoint in China’s southwestern Yunnan Province, at the Myanmar border, in mid-January 2023.)

Junta confrontations with Myanmar resistance groups have destabilized areas in the China-Myanmar Economic Corridor where the PRC has industrial and infrastructure projects that are part of its One Belt, One Road scheme, and anti-Chinese sentiment prevails in some contested areas, multiple sources report. That hasn’t stopped Beijing from acting to protect its interests, generally favoring the military regime and trying to reel in the resistance. The fate of PRC railroads, highways, oil and gas pipelines, and at least one seaport — in Kyaukpyu, a town on the Indian Ocean — are at stake, and so is the construction of a hydropower dam on the Irrawaddy River in Kachin State. Ninety percent of the electricity produced by the dam would go to the PRC, the USIP reported in October 2022.

Work resumed on the China-Myanmar Economic Corridor about six months after the coup, The Jamestown Foundation, a Washington D.C.-based think tank, reported in mid-March 2023.

“The construction of a dual-use deep-sea port in [Kyaukpyu] is the crown jewel of the corridor project and the port could potentially cater to future deployments of the Chinese navy in the Indian Ocean,” the Danish Institute for International Studies (DIIS) reported in May 2022. “The transport corridor and trade with Myanmar will also offer China’s southwestern provinces energy security and opportunities for economic development.”

About 3,200 civilians have been killed since the military takeover, Myanmar’s nongovernmental Assistance Association for Political Prisoners reported in early April 2023. With fighting underway on more than a dozen fronts, the Tatmadaw and pro-junta militias are stretched thin confronting multiple resistance groups, the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights reported in April. About 1.5 million refugees have fled elsewhere in Myanmar or to other countries. Among them were more than 4,000 people who crossed into Thailand when junta and opposing forces clashed in southeastern Myanmar’s Kayin State in early April 2023, Radio Free Asia (RFA) reported. One confrontation occurred near a Chinese-backed casino in Shwe Kokko known for drug trafficking and other illicit activity, RFA said.

Shortly after the coup, peaceful protests devolved into armed clashes between the Tatmadaw and pro-democracy forces due to the brutality of the junta. Soldiers have burned villages, raped women, shot civilians and cut off food supplies, The New York Times newspaper reported in December 2022. Resistance fighters said they were waging a revolutionary war to overthrow the military that has ruled Myanmar for most of its existence, the newspaper reported.

A succession of brutal military dictators ruled the country for 50 years, from 1962 to 2011, but in 2011, the military junta decided to transition to a civilian government to diversify away from the reach of the Chinese government and to reengage with the West. A civilian political party won the general elections in 2015 and in 2020, but the military alleged the election was fraudulent and seized power once more through the coup, which has widely been viewed as illegitimate domestically and internationally.

U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights Volker Turk has called for “urgent, concrete action” to end the brutal upheaval, and many countries support his demand. The 15-member U.N. Security Council in December 2022 voted 12-3 to denounce the Myanmar military’s rights violations since the coup, with India, the PRC and Russia abstaining.

The Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) has sought an end to the violence in Myanmar, without success. At the 10-nation bloc’s meeting in Indonesia, held in early February 2023 without member Myanmar’s participation, Indonesian Foreign Minister Retno Marsudi said the situation in the rogue nation “tests our credibility,” The Diplomat magazine reported in early February 2023.

Since the coup, the PRC has become increasingly involved in Myanmar’s internal affairs. The PRC’s refusal to condemn the military junta’s actions, however, has raised concerns about the PRC’s motives and drawn criticism from many quarters for continuing to play both sides.

Meanwhile, the PRC has strived to deter Western nations from seeking a resolution in Myanmar. PRC State Councilor and Director of the CCP Central Foreign Affairs Office Wang Yi has called for an “Asian solution” to the conflict and said that forces “from outside” should not interfere, the DIIS reported.

IMAGE CREDIT: GETTY