China is supplying military hardware and ammunition to the Myanmar military junta as it struggles with fierce and growing armed resistance across the country.
Sources familiar with the matter based in Naypyitaw and on the Thai-Myanmar border said Beijing is in the process of shipping arms purchased by the regime.
“The [regime’s] shopping list is long and huge arms caches are on the way to Myanmar,” they said.
“They will arrive Myanmar in two weeks to a month,” they added.
The Irrawaddy has learned the list includes military hardware for both ground forces and the regime’s air force.
China and Russia remain major arms suppliers to the Myanmar regime and continue to supply it with jet fighters and advanced drones. The regime has deployed them to attack armed resistance forces and ethnic forces.
Currently, the regime’s deputy leader Soe Win is in China to attend the Green Development Forum organized by the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO), according to junta media.
However, it’s believed the main reason for his visit is to take care of more urgent matters like arranging arms purchases and shipments. In the Myanmar military, major arms purchases overseas are normally handled by the army chief—a position Soe Win currently holds.
Soe Win’s visit to China comes after weeks of fighting in northern Shan State, where anti-regime ethnic allied forces have resumed fighting. Lashio, the capital of northern Shan State and home to the regime’s Northeastern Military Command, has come under attack. Both sides have suffered heavy casualties in the fighting, which has caused thousands of civilians to flee the city.
The fighting has expanded to areas in neighboring Mandalay Region, where Myanmar’s second-largest city Mandalay is located. Meanwhile, junta forces are also struggling in Rakhine State in the country’s west, where the ethnic Arakan Army has launched a series of successful offensives against the regime’s forces since late 2023.
Late last year the regime suffered a humiliating defeat in northern Shan when ethnic forces launched well-coordinated attacks on junta-controlled townships and military outposts in areas near the Chinese border. By the time China brokered a ceasefire between the allied ethnic forces and the junta in January, the regime had lost about 20 towns as well as control of vital trade routes with China, not to mention huge caches of arms and ammunition and large numbers of armored vehicles and tanks.
On Sunday, Soe Win met Shen Yueyue, vice chairwoman of the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference and president of SCO’s Good-Neighborliness, Friendship and Cooperation Commission, to discuss border stability, security for Chinese investments in Myanmar, elimination of online scam operations, promotion of trade and the proposed election.
He will be in China until Tuesday. It is his first official visit to the country since the 2021 coup.
In a move that notably coincides with Soe Win’s visit to China, the junta announced on Monday that it would make Chinese New Year an official holiday in Myanmar starting next year. In taking the unprecedented step—a move even the junta’s predecessors shunned—Min Aung Hlaing’s regime has prompted criticism that it is kowtowing to Beijing in an effort to win Chinese assistance in combating the resistance.
