On June 5, 2025, the Myanmar National Democratic Alliance Army (MNDAA) convened an urgent meeting in Kutkai town in northern Shan State. Chaired by the group’s vice chief of staff, Major General Peng De Jun, it brought together at least 25 top officials and commanders. The key point on the agenda was to address tensions with its allies, especially the Shan State Progress Party/Shan State Army–North (SSPP/SSA–N). The meeting followed a clash between its troops and those of the SSA-N on June 1.
On June 17, the MNDAA and SSPP/SSA-N convened a high-level meeting in Hsini Township in an attempt to de-escalate tensions. It ended inconclusively, with an agreement to establish a communication channel between the groups.
Meanwhile clashes broke out between the SSPP/SSA-N and Ta’ang National Liberation Army (TNLA) in three different locations on June 15, 23, and 24, resulting in casualties on both sides. Both the SSPP/SSA-N and the TNLA have blamed each other for provoking them.
Incidents such as troop detentions and forced removal of checkpoints and outposts have also been regularly reported between the Kachin Independence Army (KIA) and the MNDAA as well as the TNLA.
All these armed groups are members of the Federal Political Negotiation and Consultative Committee (FPNCC)—the strongest ethnic armed alliance in Myanmar, which was formed on April 19, 2017. Other member groups include the United Wa State Army (UWSA), the Arakan Army (AA), and the National Democratic Alliance Army (NDAA).
The key question is whether the FPNCC will disintegrate amid rising intergroup tensions. Will it, therefore, be destined for a similar trajectory as the United Nationalities Federal Council (UNFC), which ultimately ceased to function and was dissolved in 2020?
In 2017, I wrote a piece titled “Will the United Nationalities Federal Council dissolve?” in which I argued that unresolved issues—namely membership problems, coordination problems, financial problems, and ineffective Institutions—could lead to the bloc’s disintegration. As we have seen, the bloc was unable to resolve these underlying challenges.
Now the FPNCC is facing comparable problems. But unlike the UNFC, the FPNCC is grappling with two even bigger ones: China’s growing influence and escalating territorial disputes among the members.
China’s growing influence
Unlike the UNFC, on which China had little to no influence, Beijing has maintained its influence over the FNPCC since its inception. It exerts significant political influence over members, particularly the USWA, to shape Myanmar’s peace process. The FPNCC materialized when the Myanmar government downgraded the UWSA in the inaugural round of peace conferences in August and September 2016 by issuing it with observer passes instead of full accreditation, which led to the UWSA delegation walking out the next day.
Seizing this opportunity, China steered the UWSA to establish a stronger alliance in competition with the UNFC. The UWSA engaged in discussions with other groups, which led to the formation of the FPNCC in less than eight months. Throughout the process, Beijing dispatched Sun Guoxiang, the special envoy for Asian affairs, to engage closely with the involved groups. Sun mediated between the Myanmar government and the bloc in the subsequent peace conference and peace talks.
China’s influence over the FPNCC became more pronounced after the 2021 military coup. It dispatched Sun’s successor Deng Xijun to engage with the FPNCC. Deng pressured the bloc to keep a distance from the civilian National Unity Government (NUG), which Beijing regarded as a proxy of the West. All member groups except the KIA duly refrained from engaging with the NUG.
In September 2024, the MNDAA publicly announced it would not cooperate with the NUG. Similarly, during a meeting with junta chief Min Aung Hlaing in May this year, NDAA leaders made it clear that their group does not host any resistance groups or political organizations, implicitly referring to the NUG and People’s Defense Forces.
China also assumed an increasingly central role as a peace mediator between the AA, MNDAA, and TNLA and the Myanmar military. In January 2024, they reached a ceasefire agreement, thought that collapsed in June that year. China subsequently brokered a ceasefire agreement between the Myanmar military and the MNDAA in January this year.
More significantly, China played a decisive role in facilitating the military’s re-entry into Lashio city by mediating the withdrawal of MNDAA forces. To monitor and stabilize the situation, Chinese security personnel or peace monitoring units were openly deployed in the northern Shan State capital. According to an MNDAA official speaking on condition of anonymity, this deployment is part of a bilateral security arrangement aimed at shielding Lashio from potential attacks by resistance forces.
This development triggered tensions within FPNCC member groups. According to a source affiliated with the TNLA, the group’s leadership of expressed discontent with the MNDAA’s ceasefire agreement with the military and its subsequent withdrawal from Lashio. China is pressuring the TNLA to emulate the MNDAA’s territorial concessions in the interest of sustaining the broader ceasefire, so the TNLA now faces increased vulnerability in Nawngkhio town, where it confronts the military’s counteroffensive.
Additionally, the recent participation of three FPNCC members—the UWSA, SSPP/SSA-N, and NDAA—in the military’s “peace forum” in Naypyitaw last week appears to have been facilitated by China’s mediation between these groups and the junta.
As a result, China’s expanding influence has emerged as a significant internal challenge to the cohesion of the FPNCC, raising the prospect of the alliance’s eventual fragmentation.
Territorial disputes
Territorial disputes among the alliance groups pose another challenge. They have been reported especially between the MNDAA, TNLA, KIA, and SSPP/SSA-N, following the Brotherhood Alliance’s launch of the Operation 1027 in northern Shan State.
The tensions have grown amid series of incidents, such as dismantling checkpoints, detention, forced removal, and outright clashes.
The FPNCC has been unable to resolve these growing tensions, although a few members have previously submitted formal complaints to the bloc’s chair, the UWSA. This inaction underscores the apparent incapacity—or unwillingness—of the UWSA to manage internal conflicts. It appears increasingly aligned with Beijing’s directives. For instance, under Chinese pressure, it imposed trade restrictions on territories controlled by the MNDAA when the group declined to sign a ceasefire agreement with the Myanmar military, which were lifted only after the MNDAA agreed to the ceasefire in January.
In the five years since the COVID-19 pandemic, the FPNCC has reportedly convened only one summit—in March 2023 in Panghsang—at the special request of the KIA. No subsequent meetings have been held to address the challenges, highlighting the alliance’s stagnation.
Thus China’s growing influence over the FPNCC member groups—an influence the bloc appears unable or unwilling to resist—combined with intensifying inter-group territorial disputes, constitutes a critical threat to the alliance’s cohesion and longevity. If these disputes remain unresolved, the FPNCC may ultimately share the same fate as its predecessor.
Joe Kumbun is the pseudonym of an independent political analyst.
