China Is Pulling Many Strings with Its Myanmar Policy

GlobalAsia

The full scope of China’s strategic interest in Myanmar has emerged with its intensified drive to open a route to the Indian Ocean with its China-Myanmar Economic Corridor linking Yunnan to the Bay of Bengal.

Beijing is vocal in its support for the new, ostensibly civilian, government in Naypyidaw and has used its influence to help settle parts of the nagging opposition rebellion against the central government.

This has all become more urgent due to the disruptive US-Israel war against Iran, writes Bertil Lintner, and India is making its own counter moves.

Published: June 2026 (Vol.21 No.2)

THE WARS in the Middle East, and the massive deployment of American military forces off the coast of Iran, have led to increased instability in the entire Indian Ocean region — and that, in turn, has caused China’s security planners to pay even more attention than before to its bilateral relations with Myanmar, in particular the China-Myanmar Economic Corridor (CMEC) between Yunnan and the Bay of Bengal. On April 3, Chinese President Xi Jinping became one of the first heads of state to congratulate the new Myanmar government and, a week later, China solidified its recognition by sending Jiang Xinzhi, the vice chairperson of the National Committee of the Chinese People’s Consultative Conference, to attend Min Aung Hlaing’s inauguration as president in Naypyidaw on April 10. Later that month, Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi paid a visit to Myanmar where he met Min Aung Hlaing and the new foreign minister, Tin Maung Swe, further confirming Beijing’s support for the military-dominated government. According to a press statement from the Chinese Foreign Ministry, the high-profile visit demonstrated “the high importance China attaches to the development of China-Myanmar relations.”

It is enough to look at the map of Asia to realize how strategically important Myanmar is to China and why Beijing has a vested interest in exercising influence over its weak southern neighbor. China is a huge inland empire with a comparatively short coastline for a nation of its size. This is a problem given that its growth model is based on foreign trade. Furthermore, exports and imports have to pass through the contested South China Sea and the congested Strait of Malacca, which is why China has long sought alternative outlets for trade for its landlocked inland provinces. Only three of China’s immediate neighbors can, potentially, provide this alternative with outlets to the Indian Ocean.

The first is Pakistan, and a highway across the Karakoram Range was built in the 1960s and 1970s to connect China’s Xinjiang region with the Pakistani province of Punjab. But that road reaches a height of 4,714 meters and is blocked by snow and ice in winter. It is also one of the most dangerous highways in the world, with frequent accidents due to its winding path up and down the mountains. The Karakoram Highway is not unimportant, but it is located in China’s far west, away from any industrial centers. Constant political volatility in Pakistan is another major reason why it cannot play a central geostrategic role.

Balancing Interests 

The other possibility is India; the Chinese have upgraded highways from Lhasa in Tibet to the border with the Indian state of Sikkim in the hope of getting access to the port of Kolkata for exports. But the Indians are not interested in providing its regional rival with such access. That leaves Myanmar. On May 19, Ma Jia, the Chinese ambassador to Myanmar, held talks with Vice President Nyo Saw about how to advance the CMEC, which Beijing sees as an increasingly crucial part of its Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), a multi-billion-dollar series of global infrastructure projects. While Western democracies condemned Min Aung Hlaing’s initial takeover of power in a coup in February 2021 and imposed sanctions on his ruling junta, China did not. Beijing has consistently encouraged trade between the two countries, with Wang Yi saying on his visit this year that China will “continue to speak up for Myanmar on the international stage.”

Unsurprisingly, China’s strategic maneuvers have been met with Indian initiatives designed to counterbalance Beijing’s expanding influence. The Indian government is also actively promoting trade with Myanmar, which serves as a strategic bridge between India and the booming economies of Southeast Asia. After meeting Min Aung Hlaing at a regional summit in the Chinese city of Tianjin in August last year, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi wrote on X: “Senior General Min Aung Hlaing and I held talks … Myanmar is a vital pillar of India’s Act East and Neighborhood First Policies. We both agreed that there is immense scope to boost ties in areas like trade, connectivity, energy, rare earth mining and security.”

Concerned by the “China factor,” Japan argues that continued sanctions and boycotts will only drive Myanmar further into Beijing’s orbit. Consequently, Tokyo has chosen to balance public criticism of human-rights abuses in Myanmar with maintaining informal lines of communication with the generals in Naypyidaw. It is clear that major regional powers believe the regime is here to stay, and that the resistance against it is not strong enough to overthrow the current government. Yet neither India nor Japan can easily counter China’s unique leverage over both sides of the Myanmar conflict, the ruling military and the opposition forces.

Strength of Opposition 

Shortly after the 2021 coup, elected members of parliament and other pro-democracy campaigners formed what they called the National Unity Government (NUG) to challenge the junta in Naypyidaw. But like the National Coalition Government of the Union of Burma, which was set up in similar circumstances after the military takeover in 1988, the NUG failed to get any international recognition and has ended up as just another group of exiled politicians. The armed resistance, though, made significant — some would argue unprecedented — headway in the first years after the coup.

Termed “the Spring Revolution,” forces combining activists from urban areas and ethnic rebels took over large tracts of land in northern Shan State, including several towns and the highways between them. Even Lashio, the main city in northern Shan State where the headquarters of the Northeast Regional Military Command is located, was captured by insurgents in August 2024. The Ta’ang National Liberation Army (TNLA), an ethnic Palaung rebel force, seized the towns of Kyaukme and Hsipaw on the main highway from the Chinese border to Mandalay and, therefore, a major route for cross-border trade, along with the ruby-mining center of Mogok, and Mong Mit, a nearby town. In the southwest, the Arakan Army (AA) drove the Myanmar Army out of most of the northern and central parts of Rakhine State.

There are indications that China’s security authorities may have indirectly supported the rebel offensive in northern Shan State in the beginning, not because they sympathized with the resistance but for an entirely different reason: they wanted anti-junta forces to capture and close down scam centers operating in the area that drained China of billions of dollars. The Shan State offensive came after China tried in vain to persuade the Myanmar military to take action against those centers, many of which operated in areas controlled by junta-allied local militias. The fact that most of the weaponry used by the rebel forces was of Chinese origin and had been supplied by the United Wa State Army (UWSA) lends credence to this suggestion. The UWSA has long enjoyed a close working relationship with China’s security services and has a ceasefire agreement with the Myanmar military; it was ostensibly neutral in the conflict. But that did not prevent the UWSA from arming its ethnic brethren, which would not have been possible without tacit Chinese acquiescence.

Winding it down

In the end, however, the resistance forces turned out to be more successful than anyone, including the Chinese, had expected. On the other hand, the scam centers were wiped out and as far as the Chinese were concerned, the rebels had outlived their usefulness. Under heavy Chinese pressure — including instructions to the UWSA to halt all supplies of arms and ammunition to the resistance — the Myanmar National Democratic Alliance Army (MNDAA), the strongest of the opposition forces, entered into a ceasefire agreement with the Myanmar military. The MNDAA also agreed to give up control of Lashio. By April 2025, the withdrawal was complete and junta-appointed officials began arriving in the city to run the local administration.

Then, in May, the Chinese urged the Palaung-run TNLA to make peace with the junta, withdraw from the towns it had captured and co- operate with China, as an official statement said, in maintaining “peace and stability in northern Shan State and along the China-Myanmar border.” The TNLA, deprived of arms supplies from the UWSA, had no choice but to agree. The Chinese-brokered ceasefires also affected resistance forces made up of lowland Burman rebels, which depended on weapons provided by ethnic groups such as the MNDAA and the TNLA.

This is what Beijing needed. Trade between Myanmar and China was restored, and China could focus on strengthening the CMEC and implementing the BRI. In addition, the Min Aung Hlaing government has pledged to co-operate with the Chinese to eliminate what is left of the scam centers in northern Shan State. But while the entire resistance may be on the defensive, it has not crumbled completely and remains strong in places, especially in Rakhine State, where the Arakan Army is not as susceptible to Chinese pressure as the forces in the north.

The Strongest Force

No other outside power could have done what China’s security services did, and its actions, once again, show how important it is for China to control its trade routes through Myanmar and access to the Bay of Bengal. According to official statistics, an estimated 70 to 80 percent of China’s imported crude oil transited the Indian Ocean before the war, with Iran, an old Chinese ally, being the main supplier. And while China has increased its pipeline imports of natural gas from Russia — a major topic discussed during Russian leader Vladimir Putin’s recent visit to Beijing — much of China’s oil still has to rely on seaborne routes through the Indian Ocean. China also imports vast quantities of minerals from Africa that must be shipped across the Indian Ocean. In the other direction, all kinds of consumer goods destined for markets in South Asia, the Middle East, Africa and Europe cross the Indian Ocean from China.

The US-Israeli war against Iran, and the disruption in the Strait of Hormuz, have severely affected China’s imports of oil and gas from the Persian Gulf. And there is another chokepoint, the Strait of Malacca and the South China Sea, which further underscores the importance of the CMEC to China. Often overlooked is the 150-kilometer gap between India’s Nicobar Islands and Indonesia’s Sumatra, through which Chinese trade also has to pass. As early as 2001, India set up the Andaman and Nicobar Command, its first tri-service command, to safeguard New Delhi’s strategic interests in the waters east of the subcontinent and monitor China’s activity in the same maritime region, which includes surveillance by submarines and spy ships. Headquartered in Port Blair on South Andaman Island, the Indian command co-ordinates activities in the eastern Indian Ocean by India’s Navy, Army, Air Force and Coast Guard. Then, in February, India announced that it will build a new airport on Great Nicobar Island, the southernmost in the group. It is designed to serve military defense purposes as well as tourism, with the Indian Navy controlling overall operations and the Airports Authority of India managing civilian operations. In short, the Andaman and Nicobar Islands will form a natural barrier between the open waters of the Bay of Bengal and the Strait of Malacca.

Normally, such a development would not be a serious concern for China, but an entirely different reality would emerge in the case of a wider conflict in the Indian Ocean. The only way for China to bypass all the chokepoints in the Indian Ocean and the South China Sea is Myanmar. It would not be possible for the CMEC, or even broader BRI infrastructure projects, to replace all current shipping lanes, but at least they provide China with an alternative to existing trade routes and, more importantly, give Beijing a platform from which it can expand its influence over the India-Pacific region.

In the end, it would be naïve to believe that China is not going to play an important role in shaping the future of Myanmar. For now, China has consolidated its control over the political landscape in the country. The wars in the Middle East, placing China and the United States on opposite sides, have set off a chain of events throughout the region. And Myanmar, with its still shaky, ostensibly civilian government, is at the crossroads of superpower rivalries, caught up in games way beyond anything it would be able to handle.