In the wake of the March 28 earthquake, speculation was rife that the junta, unable and seemingly unwilling to help the victims, would also collapse and fall from power in Naypyitaw. By the official count, some 3,700 people died, most of them near the epicenter in central Myanmar, while unofficial estimates put the figure at more than 10,000.
But nearly nearly a month later, it is becoming obvious that the opposite has happened. The military may have been largely absent from actual relief work, but a host of other countries sent teams to Myanmar to look for survivors and treat injured people. China, Russia, and India were the first to arrive, then came rescue teams from Bangladesh, Thailand, Malaysia, Hong Kong, and Singapore while millions of U.S. dollars worth of emergency aid has been pledged by the EU, UK, and South Korea to support earthquake-affected communities. Even Nepal, a poor country that was hit by a devastating earthquake in 2015, sent 41 tons of relief materials to Myanmar. The United States was slow to react but did promise to contribute US$2 million and then an additonal $7 million. Various UN agencies are involved in coordinating the relief efforts. And whether they like it or not, all those actors have to cooperate with the junta, leading to a de facto legitimization of military rule.
While rescue efforts by foreign relief workers were going ahead inside the country, junta boss Min Aung Hlaing went to Bangkok to attend a summit of a regional dialog forum, the Bay of Bengal Initiative for Multi-Sectoral Technical and Economic Cooperation (BIMSTEC). It was his first visit to Bangkok since the 2021 coup, and he got plenty of photo ops with regional leaders, among them the Thai Prime Minister Paethongtarn Shinawatra, India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Nepal’s Prime Minister K.P. Sharma Oli, the Prime Minister of Bhutan Tshering Tobgay, Sri Lanka’s Prime Minister Harini Amarasuriya, and the leader of Bangladesh’s interim government, Muhammad Yunus. This diplomatic breakthrough for the junta probably would not have happened but for earthquake and the sympathy it evoked from people in the region. The fact that the Myanmar Air Force continued to bomb resistance-controlled towns and villages even in earthquake-hit areas had little impact on Min Aung Hlaing’s efforts to gain acceptance for his regime.
In the aftermath of the earthquake, efforts are also being made to address the wars inside Myanmar. On the sidelines of the BIMSTEC meeting, former Thai Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra, who is also Paethongtarn’s father, hosted a dinner for Min Aung Hlaing and Malaysia’s Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim with the aim of mediating peace. The Bangkok Post reported on April 21: “After years of diplomatic deadlock, recent moves by [Anwar and Thaksin] have sparked cautious optimism over Myanmar. Thanks to their efforts, the world is watching ASEAN take a leading role in solving one of the region’s most intractable crises.” Malaysia holds the chair of ASEAN this year, and Anwar has appointed Thaksin as an “informal adviser,” not least on matters relating to Myanmar.
Anwar has also taken the bold step of engaging with representatives of the parallel National Unity Government (NUG), which was set up by elected—and ousted—lawmakers after the 2021 coup. After the meetings, Anwar said he believed there would be a ceasefire. But that statement seems to fall into the decades-old category of wishful thinking when it comes to peace efforts in Myanmar. While the NUG has indicated that it is interested in a ceasefire so more aid efforts can be made after the earthquake, the junta continues to pound resistance-controlled areas along the Thai border as well as in Sagaing and Mandalay regions, where the earthquake has destroyed entire communities and killed thousands. For Min Aung Hlaing, talks with people like Anwar and Thaksin are nothing but a step towards recognition and acceptance. The NUG, as Min Aung Hlaing sees it, is an irrelevant player on the Myanmar chessboard—and who is to say he is wrong? Apart from issuing statements, it has done little to gain international support after the earthquake.
Min Aung Hlaing and his comrades also know that there is little ASEAN can do. Its two cardinal principles, non-interference and consensus, make the grouping impotent, as it has shown on numerous occasions throughout its 58-year history: the conflict in East Timor, border disputes between Thailand and Cambodia, Cambodia and Vietnam, Malaysia and the Philippines, insurgencies across Thailand’s southern border with Malaysia, and unheavals in Myanmar and Cambodia—there is not a single issue involving member states that ASEAN has ever managed to solve.
That leaves the Chinese as the only ones with the capacity, the means, and the motivation to intervene in Myanmar’s internal affairs—and to turn whatever happens to their advantage. While officially adhering to a policy of “non-interference”, no country has actually interfered in Myanmar’s internal affairs as much as China. It began in the 1960s, when the Chinese decided to give all-out political and military support to the insurgent Communist Party of Burma and continued with close contacts with a wide range of ethnic resistance armies, in particular the United Wa State Army (UWSA), which took over most of the communists’ former base along the Chinese border. In a more recent development, a fleet of cars bearing Chinese flags and a sign reading “Ceasefire Monitoring Group” reportedly led by special envoy Deng Xijun, a prominent diplomat, has arrived in Lashio in northern Shan State.
The city, which had served as the home of the junta’s Northeastern Command, had finally been captured in July last year by the Myanmar National Democratic Alliance Army (MNDAA), a force set up by ethnic Chinese from the Kokang area. The MNDAA, along with allied resistance groups including some smaller Burman ones, then scored more battlefield victories, and so did the Ta’ang National Liberation Army (TNLA), an ethnic Palaung group that has seized control of several towns in northern Shan State.
Those developments, unprecedented in the recent history of Myanmar’s civil wars, led to hopes that the Brotherhood Alliance of resistance forces—the MNDAA, the TNLA, and the Arakan Army (AA)—as well as other ethnic armies and their Bamar partners would march on and capture at least the garrison town of Pyin Oo Lwin, and perhaps even Mandalay. But that did not happen and probably never will. The turmoil in northern Shan State has disrupted lucrative border trade between China and Myanmar, and, more importantly, made it more difficult for China to implement its schemes for the China-Myanmar Economic Corridor (CMEC), which will connect China with ports on the Bay of Bengal and vital trade routes across the Indian Ocean.
The Brotherhood Alliance may have benefited from the supply of Chinese armaments through UWSA but, by capturing urban centers, it went far beyond what the Chinese wanted to see. The resistance offensive in northern Shan State, after all, began as a Chinese-supported drive to shut down scam centers that operated in junta-controlled areas and drained China of billions of dollars; but then the MNDAA and its allies turned out to be more successful than anyone could have expected.
The Chinese had to intervene. Under heavy Chinese pressure, the MNDAA has agreed to withdraw from Lashio and surrounding areas, and now it seems that junta-appointed administrative staff are moving back in. None of that could have happened without forceful intervention from the Chinese.
It should also be remembered that China has pledged 1 billion yuan, or approximately $137 million, in emergency humanitarian assistance for earthquake victims and the reconstruction of towns and therefore has considerable leverage over the generals in Naypyitaw. No other country could wield the same kind of influence over all sides in Myanmar’s civil wars.
What is going to happen to towns and major villages controlled by the TNLA is an open question. The main trade route from Chinese border towns such as Ruili in Yunnan, go through TNLA-controlled territory, and the Chinese have tried on several occasions to negotiate a ceasefire between the Palaungs and the junta. From China’s point of view, that would mean reopening the highway down to Mandalay and a TNLA withdrawal from towns along it. Deng Xijun has been involved in talks between the TNLA and the military, but due to what was described as “the complexity of negotiations” nothing substantial came out of it. But after the recent events in Lashio, it is doubtful whether the TNLA can resist Chinese pressure much longer. And that could mean a retreat from Hsipaw, Kyaukme, and other towns along the highway to Mandalay.
That leaves the AA, which, apart from taking part in the war in the north, has managed to take over most of its home state of Rakhine. The only major exceptions are the state capital of Sittwe and nearby Kyaukphyu, the site for deep-sea ports and a Special Economic Zone at the southern end of the CMEC and, as such, China’s most important foothold on the Bay of Bengal. Although it cannot be proven, it is likely that the AA has refrained from attacking those places because that would most certainly go against China’s interests and have dire consequences.
Although the AA’s main force and area of operation are located far from the Chinese border, it is a close partner of the MNDAA and the TNLA. The fact that AA leaders frequently travel from Laiza in Kachin State—where most of them are based under protection of their first mentor, the Kachin Independence Army—down to the UWSA’s headquarters at Pangkham (or Panghsang) means that their relationship with China’s security services is also close. Such a journey would have to go through China, arranged by Chinese authorities.
Exactly what may happen next is anybody’s guess, but it is certain that China will continue its “peace efforts” and pressure the TNLA and the AA to agree to a truce with junta. The next step would be to negotiate some kind of arrangement, perhaps with other resistance groups as well. It is impossible to say what shape that would take, but the earthquake has given the Chinese a new impetus to interfere in Myanmar’s internal crises. The Chinese are there, manipulating the situation on the ground to secure their long-term geostrategic interests, and that will not change, regardless of what ASEAN and other outsiders seem to believe.
