Myanmar junta boss Min Aung Hlaing’s promise to China to start a Belt and Road-related project in Myanmar is a mirage, and merely reflects his hopes to use the project as leverage against ethnic armed organizations and resistance forces, analysts say.
During his visit to China early this month, Min Aung Hlaing met with Chinese Premier Li Qiang, who told him that China was ready to work with Myanmar to advance the construction of a China-Myanmar Economic Corridor (CMEC).
The CMEC comes under the broad umbrella of China’s Belt and Road Initiative and envisages a multibillion-dollar package of infrastructure, trade, and energy projects designed to link southwestern China and the Indian Ocean via Myanmar.
Min Aung Hlaing replied that a Muse-Mandalay-Kyaukphyu railroad project under the CMEC “will be implemented in possible areas depending on the situation of the areas,” adding that Myanmar will make every effort to ensure the safety of Chinese personnel, institutions, and projects.
The railroad would connect the border town of Muse in northern Shan State with Mandalay, Myanmar’s second-largest city in the heart of the country, and extend all the way to Kyaukphyu in Rakhine on the Bay of Bengal. This would create a crucial link for China to the Indian Ocean, which is strategically significant for trade and energy transport.
But the junta’s writ barely runs in any of the areas through which the railroad would pass, since much of northern Shan State, upper Myanmar, and Rakhine State is under the control of anti-regime EAOs and resistance forces.
That explains Min Aung Hlaing’s use of the phrase “in possible areas,” which are few and far between and were not specified in reports by the Myanmar state media.
Jason Tower, the Myanmar country director at the United States Institute of Peace, said the junta wants to weaponize any agreement with China on a project implementation timeframe against the EAOs and People’s Defense Forces (PDFs) that presently control many of the territories.
“Through such a deal, Min Aung Hlaing sees the possibility of teaming up with China to pressure the EAOs and PDFs to permit the Myanmar military back into these territories to provide security to Chinese workers,” he said.
But he added that China often takes a pragmatic approach to Myanmar’s internal conflicts and may not want to fully support the junta’s agenda. Instead, it could even cooperate with EAOs if they express willingness to partner with China to provide security for the project.
“China certainly understands that Min Aung Hlaing’s forces no longer have the influence or power to implement such a project, and that implementation of any such project with the military would depend largely on China’s willingness to get directly engaged in Myanmar’s domestic struggle, or for China to work out some form of deal that would allocate very significant benefits to the resistance,” Tower said.
A local analyst also said Min Aung Hlaing’s promise to start the project is detached from reality and nothing more than appeasement of Beijing to garner its support.
He pointed out that even though Muse, the project’s starting point, remains under the regime’s control, surrounding areas like Lashio and Hsipaw through which the railroad would pass, are not.
In central Myanmar, the railroad would run through Mandalay and Magwe regions, where the junta has been largely driven back to the towns while resistance groups hold much of the countryside.
After passing through Magwe, the railway would continue westward into Rakhine State before eventually ending in Kyaukphyu. This leg too would pass through areas of Rakhine where regime troops have been suffering significant losses to the local Arakan Army.
“Given that situation, it’s quite impossible to start the project at the moment. It doesn’t make sense and is nothing more than an attempt to please China and win its support,” the analyst said.
Tower said Min Aung Hlaing’s no. 1 priority for his China trip was to boost security support from Beijing, which he sees as the only option to avoid further defeat on the battlefield.
It therefore came as no surprise that he would push the Chinese government to move forward quickly with the railroad project.
But China “certainly understands that Min Aung Hlaing has no concept of how to manage an economy, and that the regime is failing both on the battlefield and with respect to the most basic forms of economic governance,” he said.
