Beijing, Not Yunnan, Has Always Driven Chinese Support for Myanmar Insurgents

The Irrawaddy

Some Chinese historians and foreign scholars whose views are close to those of the leadership in Beijing are busy rewriting history. China’s support for the Communist Party of Burma (CPB) was driven by local dynamics in Yunnan rather than being part of the then Chinese leadership’s overall policy of exporting revolution to the region and beyond. That version of the nature of cross-border interactions makes the central government seem less guilty of interference in Myanmar’s civil wars—and it is, needless to say, far from the realities that prevailed during the reign of Chairman Mao Zedong.

No one doubts that certain local authorities in Yunnan could have been helpful and acted independently when it came to sending petrol, diesel and foodstuffs across the border. They also issued permits for CPB members who wanted to travel through China from one point of the border to another. But local officials or  military officers in Yunnan could not have masterminded the massive support that the Burmese communists received during the decade 1968-1978, and, albeit on a limited scale, even after that. This remains true even today, when it comes to Chinese support for the CPB’s successor, the United Wa State Army (UWSA).

Preparations for a China-supported push by the CPB into Myanmar began shortly after General Ne Win seized power in 1962. Some 143 CPB members had been living in exile in China since the early 1950s, but they had not, until then, engaged in any militant activity. Most of them were based in Chengdu in Sichuan, a province north of Yunnan, where they received basic training in Marxism-Leninism while the leaders attended a higher party school in Beijing. However, Ne Win’s 1962 coup, and Mao’s rise to unchallenged power, changed all that, ushering in a new era in China’s Myanmar policy. Shortly after the coup, a Leading Group of Five headed by party veteran Thakin Ba Thein Tin was set up in Beijing to coordinate work among the exiles.

China, long wary of the ambitious general in Yangon, had decided to give all-out support to the CPB. A year after the coup, Ne Win called for a “peace parley” to be held in Yangon, and that gave the CPB exiles in China an unforeseen opportunity to link up with the old forces still holding out in the Pegu Yoma mountains and other strongholds at home. A contingent of 29 party members arrived by air from Beijing, ostensibly to take part in the talks. Among them was Thakin Ba Thein Tin, who managed to sneak out of Yangon and make it to the Pegu Yoma. He had brought with him radio transmitters from China so the fighters at home could communicate with, and receive orders from, the Leading Group of Five in Beijing. When the talks—as expected—failed, Thakin Ba Thein Tin and one of his comrades returned to Beijing while the other so-called “Beijing Returnees” went to the Pegu Yoma where they assumed de facto leadership of the cadres at home.

The problem was that the exiles in China lacked combat experience, so in early 1963, even before the peace talks began, they were introduced to a group of 200-300 Kachin led by hero Naw Seng, a decorated hero of World  War II who later went underground to fight against the central government. He and his men had escaped into China in 1950 and been given sanctuary in a people’s commune in Guizhou province northeast of Yunnan. Those Kachin became the core of the CPB unit that came across the border at Möng Ko in northeastern Shan State on January 1, 1968. Thousands of “Chinese volunteers”, mostly Red Guards but also regular troops from the People’s Liberation Army, also streamed across the border in support of the CPB.

China poured in more aid into the CPB effort than to any other communist movement outside Indochina. A bridge was built by Chinese engineers across the Nam Hka border river and truckloads of supplies were sent to Panghsang on the other side, where the CPB’s new headquarters was located. Army pistols, automatic and semi-automatic assault rifles, medium and heavy machine guns, 60, 81 and 120 mm mortars, recoilless rifles, landmines and assorted ammunition were among the weaponry the Chinese provided to the Burmese communists. Uniforms made in China also came across the border and so did radio equipment, trucks, petrol, rice, other foodstuffs and even cooking utensils. One of the trucks was loaded with thousands of freshly printed, detailed military maps, showing most parts of upper and central Myanmar. The Chinese also helped the CPB build two hydroelectric power stations, one at Panghsang and the other at Möng Ko. A clandestine radio station, the People’s Voice of Burma, was officially inaugurated in March 1971.

Thakin Ba Thein Tin, who was a close friend of Mao Zedong, traveled between Panghsang, Kunming and Beijing. He was also taken on a trip to Hanoi, where he met the Vietnamese leader Ho Chi Minh. Party general secretary Khin Maung Gyi traveled from China to Albania—then a Chinese ally—to attend a party congress in Tirana. But Kang Sheng, at the time China’s intelligence chief and the mastermind behind the formation of a “new” CPB, had grander plans. During the Indochina Wars in the 1960s and 1970s, the Americans talked about what they called “the domino theory”; if communism was not stopped in Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia, it would spread to the rest of Southeast Asia and perhaps even beyond.

That theory may have had some validity, but for Kang and Mao as well, the North Vietnamese leadership and the National Liberation Front in the south were too close to the Soviet Union to be trusted. Instead, Myanmar would be the gateway through which revolution would spread across the region. Once the CPB had taken over Myanmar or most of it, Chinese weapons would flow down to fraternal, Maoist-leaning parties in Thailand, Malaysia and Indonesia. In the end, communism would emerge victoriously throughout the region. The plan, absurd as it may seem, also included a linkup with the Communist Party of Australia (Marxist-Leninist), a tiny group of pro-Beijing Australian radicals.

In line with what Kang Sheng envisaged, Panghsang was not only the CPB’s headquarters but also played host to about a dozen activists of the Communist Party of Thailand as well as more than 20 cadres from Partai Komunis Indonesia, the Indonesian communist party, including the two daughters of its once powerful chairman, D. N. Aidit. The Communist Party of Malaya’s Suara Revolusi Malaya (Voice of the Malayan Revolution) broadcast from Hengyang south of Changsha in Hunan Province, but its leader, Chin Peng, often visited Kunming where he met CPB cadres.

Kang Sheng’s policy of revolutionary expansion also included support for insurgents in northeastern India. In January 1967, a group of 132 rebels from the Naga National Council reached China after an arduous trek through northern Myanmar. Thinoselie Keyho and Thuingaleng Muivah, the leaders of the group, were flown to Beijing to meet government officials and then taken on a tour of Shanghai, Nanjing, Guangzhou and other places. Although the Nagas were ardent Christians, more than 700 militants received  military training in Tengchong in Yunnan and returned to Nagaland loaded with Chinese weapons. After the Nagas came other northeastern rebels. Altogether about 150 Mizo tribesmen, from another predominantly Christian tribe who fought for a separate state, trekked through northern Myanmar to China in the 1970s. In April 1976, a smaller group of Manipuri revolutionaries also made it to China, but via Nepal and on to Tibet.

Like the Nagas, the Mizo rebels were trained in Yunnan and provided with arms by the Chinese, while the Manipuris received ideological training and military instruction at an army camp near Lhasa. It was not surprising that the Chinese decided to support the Manipuris, who were ardent revolutionaries, but support for the Christian Nagas and the Mizos was motivated by their struggle against the Indian state, then a sworn enemy of China. But Muivah, inspired by what he saw in China, later set up his own group, the unfortunately named National Socialist Council of Nagaland (“national socialism” is another name for Nazism), which combined Maoist rhetoric with evangelical Christianity.

In a classified Chinese document titled “China Should Become the Arsenal for World Revolution”, which was intercepted and published by the security services in Taiwan in mid-1967, Mao had declaimed, “The present situation is excellent. Nagaland in India is fighting against the Congress Party with armed struggle.” Mao then went on to stress the importance of the CPB: “The geographic conditions in Burma are better than those of Vietnam, with more room to maneuver… it is all better if the Burmese government chooses to oppose us; I hope it will sever normal relations with us. In that case, we can more openly support the Burmese Communist Party.” They did so after riots in Yangon’s Chinatown in June 1967. In the same speech, Mao went on to say, “China is not only the center of world revolution, but it must also be the center of world revolution militarily and technically. When we give weapons, they will be Chinese weapons engraved with Chinese characters (except those to certain specific areas). We will support them openly; and China must become the arsenal for world revolution.”

Then, on September 9, 1976, Mao died. Thakin Ba Thein Tin traveled to Beijing and was one of the guests of honor at his funeral on September 18. Chinese policies seemed to be the same when Thakin Ba Thein Tin and vice chairman Thakin Pe Tint came together to Beijing in November that year and received a red-carpet welcome in Beijing. They were driven in a Hongqi (“red flag”) limousine to Hua’s command center in Beijing, and the visit was broadcast on state TV. Everything still seemed to be going well for the CPB.

The CPB, however, made the mistake of condemning Deng Xiaoping as a “right deviationist”, and when he reassumed power in late 1977, Chinese policies towards the CPB began to change. Deng wanted to build a new China and export consumer goods, not revolution. Chinese support for the CPB was drastically reduced, but it was never cut off. But the fact that the CPB did continue to receive some support after 1977 was not due to local authorities and contacts in Yunnan, as suggested by some Chinese scholars. It would have been foolish of the Chinese to give up their foothold inside Myanmar, and that policy was maintained even when the mostly Wa rank-and-file of the CPB’s army rose in mutiny in April 1989 and drove the entirety of the old leadership into exile in Yunnan. And what the UWSA—which was set up after the mutiny and then inherited most of the territory formerly controlled by the CPB—stands for is more in line with today’s market-oriented policies in China than the outdated ideology of the old Myanmar Maoists.

Consequently, China’s security services established a close relationship with the UWSA, which has become stronger and better equipped than the CPB ever was. The UWSA’s arsenal includes everything from assault rifles, machine guns and rocket launchers to armored personnel carriers and other  military vehicles, anti-aircraft missiles and even sophisticated, weaponized drones. That is not the kind of equipment that falls off the back of a truck or can be provided by a local commander in Yunnan. The CPB was a vehicle for exporting revolution; the UWSA gives Beijing a strong card to play when negotiating with the government in Naypyitaw as well as dealing with other ethnic armed organizations in Myanmar.

There is nothing to suggest that Chinese support for the CPB, and after that the UWSA, has ever been “driven by local dynamics in Yunnan”. But that is the version of events that has been promoted by Fan Hongwei, a prominent Chinese scholar who claims to have researched the archives of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and studied regional history. Enze Han at the University of Hong Kong is another leading voice for promotion of the “borderland perspective.” Li Chenyang, a Kunming-based academic, has underscored the “bridge role” that Yunnan plays, emphasizing local agency in managing border insurgencies and economic ties.

Xu Peng at the School of Oriental and African Studies in London argues in a November 5, 2025 article for Asian Studies Review that, after the introduction of new policies, there was “a significant temporal disconnect between the Chinese central government’s policies and the actions of its border government, creating ambiguity over whether to sustain, modify, or terminate support for the CPB.” Other perspectives, she argues, rest on some “Cold  War legacy” and assume that “China’s interest in the borderlands directly translates into enduring support for regional armed groups. Though widely held, this view conflicts with China’s officially stated policy of non-intervention, which has been repeatedly emphasized in public discourse by the PRC government.”

The Chinese government may talk about “non-interference”, but that is pure baloney. Historically and presently, no country has intervened in Myanmar’s internal conflicts more extensively than China. Border security is national security as well as part of overall foreign policy and, as history shows, never the responsibility of local authorities.