Yesterday, The Irrawaddy published a report claiming that China’s government is preparing to host Senior Gen. Min Aung Hlaing, the head of Myanmar’s military junta, in what would be his first state visit to China since the 2021 coup.
Citing “sources familiar with the matter,” the report stated that preparations are now under way for the trip, which will likely take place later this month.
During the visit, The Irrawaddy’s sources stated, Min Aung Hlaing could meet with Chinese Premier Li Qiang. “It is believed the two sides will discuss the regime’s forthcoming election, which is scheduled to be held in 2025, among other things,” the report added.
While the state visit has not yet been confirmed by either Naypyidaw or Beijing, it would mark an important watershed in China’s policy toward Myanmar. China has maintained diplomatic links with the military regime that seized power in February 2021, but it has so far held back from welcoming the man most responsible for the coup and the destabilizing and destructive conflict that has ensued.
As The Irrawaddy argued, a visit “could be seen not only as a major policy shift on the part of Beijing toward the regime, but also as giving some much-desired legitimacy to the junta, which is reeling from a nationwide armed resistance movement.”
The reports come at a trying time for the military junta. Over the past year, the military has lost considerable amounts of ground to ethnic armed groups and allied People’s Defense Forces, particularly in regions of Shan State abutting the Chinese border. The Operation 1027 offensive, which was launched by the Three Brotherhood Alliance of ethnic armed groups in October 2023, has all but expelled the Myanmar armed forces from the northern part of the state. It culminated in Myanmar National Democratic Alliance Army (MNDAA)’s capture in early August of Lashio, a major economic center and the de facto capital of northern Shan State. This has given resistance forces control of major arteries of trade with China, and brought them a step closer to launching large-scale attacks into Myanmar’s dry central zone.
The offensive has highlighted some of the contradictions of China’s policy toward Myanmar. Despite opposing and discouraging conflict along its borders, Beijing seemed to lend its passive support to the first stage of Operation 1027, out of frustration that the junta had failed to heed its call to shut down the criminal online scam operations that were then flourishing under a junta-aligned Border Guard Force. It initially opposed the second phase of the operation – particularly the MNDAA’s assault on Lashio, which broke a Beijing-brokered ceasefire – but eventually appeared to acquiesce to the new status quo.
Throughout this period, China intensified its diplomatic outreach to the military junta in Naypyidaw. Former President Thein Sein paid a visit to Beijing on June 29, where he met with Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi. China’s special envoy to Myanmar Deng Xijun also met with junta Foreign Minister Than Swe in Naypyidaw on June 19, just before the resumption of fighting in northern Shan State. Vice-Senior Gen. Soe Win, the junta’s number two, then made an official trip to attend a forum in Qingdao in Shandong province in early July.
Then, in August, shortly after the fall of Lashio to the MNDAA, Wang Yi visited Naypyidaw. During a meeting with Min Aung Hlaing, the Chinese Foreign Ministry later reported, Wang said that China “supports Myanmar’s efforts towards an early political reconciliation within the constitutional framework.” He also said that China “opposes chaos or conflict in Myanmar, opposes external forces interfering in Myanmar’s internal affairs.”
The increased diplomatic outreach was seemingly less a product of warmth than of frustration. Reading between the lines, one senses a growing Chinese frustration with Min Aung Hlaing and his regime. In addition to its inaction on scam syndicates operating in the border areas, the junta’s inability to respect the ceasefire brokered by Chinese negotiators in January has raised the specter of prolonged instability along the border, with secondary effects on flows of trade and progress on megaprojects associated with the Belt and Road Initiative. At the time of Wang’s visit, Richard Horsey of the International Crisis Group told The Associated Press that the Chinese had come to see the military regime as “fundamentally incompetent.”
At the same time, China likely views the alternative – a collapse of the military junta and the ensuing uncertainties – as a worse prospect, and has chosen to continue supporting the devil it knows. Alongside their pressure and criticisms, Chinese officials have expressed strong support for the elections that the junta has long envisioned as a means of ending the conflict and transitioning the country back to a form of civilianized, albeit military-dominated, rule.
During his visit to Myanmar in August, Wang offered “technological assistance” and “essential aid” for the holding of the elections, which the security situation has forced the junta repeatedly to delay. (The current timeframe is sometime in 2025.) The elections are not likely to be free or fair; nor does the junta have the capacity to hold them in large parts of the country. But Beijing appears now to view the elections as the best – perhaps, only – hope of ending the country’s crisis on terms supportive of China’s short- and long-term goals.
As Yun Sun of the Stimson Center wrote in Nikkei Asia in August, there are signs that China is doubling down on a “dual-tracked approach,” in which it prioritizes stability in northern Myanmar, perhaps by mediating ceasefire negotiations that “will consolidate the new status quo” in Shan State, while supporting “an election-led transfer of power in lower Myanmar.” It is in this context that we should perhaps situate Min Aung Hlaing’s much-criticized recent call for resistance groups to put down their weapons, engage in political negotiations, and take part in next year’s elections.
The puzzle, then, is how to interpret the report that China is preparing to host Min Aung Hlaing in Beijing. This would appear to mark a shift from China’s hedging position to one of explicit recognition for and support of the military administration. Certainly, as The Irrawaddy was right to point out, the junta would milk such a visit for all of the legitimacy it was worth.
At the same time, such a visit would probably mark a shift in means rather than ends. China’s main goal in Myanmar is not the survival of the military regime per se, but the preservation of the stability necessary for the resumption of trade and the advancement of key infrastructure projects. If Beijing is preparing to roll out the red carpet for Min Aung Hlaing, in a break with its diplomatic approach since the coup, it would appear to suggest that the Chinese government views this step as somehow supporting these goals.
The most logical conclusion is that by strengthening its ties with the junta, China is attempting to exercise a greater influence on the course of the country’s conflict and the electoral transition plan, however vague and unrealistic, that the junta has formulated. Beyond that, how far Beijing will go to shore up Min Aung Hlaing’s rule if his regime continues to suffer reversals on the battlefield, remains a subject of some conjecture.