Paul Greening, who has worked as a political analyst and a specialist consultant covering the conflict in Myanmar, says anti-regime forces are rife with speculation that China is preparing to send its own troops and security guards to protect its investments in the strife-torn country.
That would include Chinese soldiers working alongside contractors, including Russia’s PMC Wagner Group, whose priority would be to secure control of the 771-kilometer-long oil and gas pipelines that run from Myanmar’s coast into China’s Yunnan Province.
The Diplomat has spoken with several other sources who also said China was preparing to put boots on the ground in Myanmar alongside contractors, including the Wagner Group. One military analyst said this could tip the balance of the civil war, depending on how the Arakan Army responds in Rakhine State.
In recent months, Rakhine has seen perhaps the worst of the fighting in Myanmar since the military ousted an elected government in early 2021 and tipped the country into a bloody civil war.
Greening said speculation about China’s plans for Myanmar intensified after junta chief Min Aung Hlaing met with Chinese officials earlier this month and amid reports that Peng Daxun, the head of the Myanmar National Democratic Alliance Army, has been placed under house arrest in Yunnan.
He also told The Diplomat’s Luke Hunt that heavy fighting was expected to continue into the dry season, but plans by ethnic armed organizations (EAOs) to take Mandalay by the end of the year now appear unlikely.
He said EAOs and allied People’s Defense Forces have surrounded the city but fear the carnage that could be inflicted upon the civilian population if they were to mount a full-scale invasion of the former royal capital, once known as the seat of kings.
Instead, Greening says, rebels will lay siege and choke off supply routes in and out of Mandalay while consolidating their positions in their respective states and mounting attacks into the military’s stronghold in Myanmar’s central dry zone,