China and Myanmar
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From Carnegie, China, this is China in the World. Engaging leading scholars and former policymakers on China's foreign policy, evolving global role, and relations with Southeast Asia in particular. Brought to you by the East Asia-based Center of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.

Hi, welcome to this special five-episode series of the China and the World podcast from Carnegie China. We're looking at Southeast Asian perspectives on the People's Republic of China with Southeast Asian voices from Southeast Asia. My name is Ian Chong. I'm a non-resident scholar with Carnegie China and an associate professor of political science at the National University of Singapore.

Today, we're going to be talking about the People's Republic of China and their relationship with the Myanmar Civil War. The PRC has had a long history with Myanmar. Some of it

quite tumultuous. So there's going to be quite a lot to talk about. I'm really pleased to have two real experts on Myanmar with me. First, we have Mo Thuzar, who's a senior fellow with the ICS Yusuf Ishak Institute, where she coordinates the Myanmar Studies Program. She's been there since 2008. Tona is another good friend of mine. She's a senior scientist in political geography at the University of Zurich.

and Associate Fellow with the Southeast Asian Politics and Foreign Policy Program with the International Institute for Strategic Studies. And she's been involved deeply in this program tracking conflict in Myanmar as the civil war progresses. She actually has a new book co-authored with Aaron Connolly, New Answers to Old Questions, Myanmar Before and After the 2021 coup d'etat.

Hello, Ian. Hello, Shona. Thanks for having me on the program. It's great to be in conversation again with the two of you. Looking forward to the chat. Great. Yes, thank you so much for having me here, Ian. And it's really nice to see you, Mo, as well, and to be chatting about this topic. Wonderful. So for those of our listeners who are perhaps a little bit...

less familiar with myanmar and the prc's interest that can uh both of you help walk us through what interests beijing have in myanmar i think you know if we have to just just boil it down into like three main points of course um beijing's interests or approach would be of course um there would be the geopolitical the strategic element to it uh but they are also clear um

economic interests related to China's, I think, energy needs and other economic and trade investment interests as well. So that's another interest. And because of the long border that Myanmar and China share, there are inevitably, of course, the border security, national security concerns related to any countries that

share borders. So I don't think we should discount also the aspect or the perspective of Yunnan

which is, of course, the province in China with which I think the China-Myanmar borders also have that intersection. So there, of course, the development aspect, as well as also the regional provincial government's implementation or support of Beijing's interests

would also come into play? As for me, a lot of my research looks at the microdynamics of armed conflicts, but then how different microdynamics interact and intersect with one another. So I think my kind of research focus is quite different from Mo's, but my answers also come from that standpoint.

I would say for me, the border looms very, very large in China's calculations with Myanmar, which I think adds on to Mo's point that what is happening in Yunnan is central to what's happening between Beijing and Myanmar writ large. And I think that China's interests in Myanmar are shaped by sharing a kind of more than 2,000 kilometre long border.

which has resulted in concerns not just over national security, but also about how China can potentially profit from a border that has been historically quite unstable, quite restive, and in many ways, quite violent. Yeah, so could I push you a little bit on that? I mean, the very long Myanmar war

China border. I mean, it seems that ethnic groups cross, straddle the border. There's been various kinds of grey economy stuff that's going on. Can you give our listeners a sense of what that border looks like? The Myanmar kind of China border, I think, first of all, it's quite important to note that it's never kind of fully come under the control of the Myanmar government at any point in the country's history.

We're talking about a very remote kind of region, a very mountainous area that historically has been very, very difficult to capture by any kind of central state. This also means that demographically, the people who live in this area are quite different and consider themselves, I suppose, to be quite different from the revanched majority in Myanmar. This area has also been home to various kinds of armed groups,

And the history of kind of insurgency in this part of Myanmar, in all of Myanmar, is kind of long and complex. I would say as someone who has been trying to understand these dynamics, it's particularly complex in this part of the country. But most significantly, I suppose, historically was the Communist Party of Burma, which was active in the area until 1989. And then after that, splintered

into various groups that now China enjoys various kinds of personal political economic connections with.

This has also meant that various war economies have come up in the area that in order to fund these insurgencies, in order to maintain the autonomy of these groups that China's had to contend with, at times appropriating these economies for its own purposes, at times seeking to crack down on them. Yeah, I think that's a really great context that Shona's provided when it comes to also bilateral relations, security,

say, capital-to-capital interactions, so to speak. There are several ethnic armed organizations which are loggerheads with the Myanmar military, with the state. Some of these groups have either been co-opted by the military and, you know, have become border guard force militias. Some have signed bilateral ceasefire agreements. And there are a lot of these, I guess, you know,

economic activities that go on in these periphery areas are coordinated or controlled by these several groups that also, I think, have this feedback loop into the bilateral interactions between Myanmar and China. Great. So just to move a little bit further away from the border, we know that the PRC has

recent history of investing in Myanmar. There's the Kiao Kiew port, there was the pipeline that brings fossil fuels from the port up through Myanmar into Yunnan. And before there was also the abortive Mitzong Dam. Can you sort of give us a context of what China's interests are in all of this?

In the context of China's Belt and Road Initiative and all those infrastructure investments, projects and so on that China has in this region, in Southeast Asia, of course, Ian, you mentioned the projects in Myanmar,

which focus on hydropower, cross-border industrial zones, connectivity. I think you mentioned the high-speed railway networks, the JiaoPiu deep-sea port. And I think what we see here, of course, is that different from other countries in Southeast Asia, I don't think we can really say whether these projects, you know, have an impact or not because, again,

They've been either stalled or delayed during the time of the National League for Democracy administration. And of course, post 2021, after the military coup on 1st of February 2021, there were also these, I think, continued delays that led

that China had to grapple with. Maybe, of course, primarily due to, before the coup would have been due to concerns surrounding the implementation and the coronavirus pandemic also added to the delays.

although there have been efforts right now to restart some of these high-profile projects. Most of the policy elite might have viewed all these initiatives as providing necessary infrastructure development. And I think prior to the pandemic, we were pretty optimistic that the Belt and Road Initiative would benefit the region and even ASEAN-China relations. There's also sentiments that are related to proceeding with caution and

and concerns about getting fairer deals. And those concerns, I think, Ian, Shona, have continued and deepened after the 2021 coup. And since then, I think sentiments from Myanmar, sentiments in Myanmar have largely expressed more concern about China's economic dominance and political influence.

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We know what's at stake for the PRC. We know what its interests in Myanmar are. So how have these informed the way that Beijing has played a role or not played a role in the ongoing civil war? Do you have thoughts on that, Shona?

Yeah, thank you very much for the question. I think Beijing's role, and Mo, feel free to add on, in regard to Myanmar has been quite vacillatory and ambivalent, I would say. I think early on there was the assumption made often by foreign analysts in English that

China was siding with the regime. However, China has never recognized Ming Long Lai as the head of state in Myanmar. He's been recognized as the head of junta, but not the head of state. And there have been various signs that China is taking a kind of cautious approach that is kind of

looking at what's happening in Myanmar incrementally and making moves based on that. It's vacillatory, but we've also seen high-level visits by junta members to Beijing. There are reports of Beijing providing armaments to the junta. So how is that vacillatory? Yeah, well...

To my understanding, at least, there have been kind of high-level diplomatic engagements. But at the same time, no kind of member of the junta has been invited on a bilateral visit to China. So these have purely been in kind of multilateral forums. At the same time as well, my stance on this, I suppose, comes again from returning us to the border, in which last year in October, during Operation 1027, China

China played a key role in ensuring that the Three Brotherhood Alliance could launch successful offensives against the regime. Yeah, I think that's a great point that Shona's making, Ian. And I'd just like to maybe just, you know, add on to that because, you know,

Definitely, as Shona's already outlined also, China was not among the voices expressing concern about the military coup in 2021. And if anything, what Shona's highlighted also about this ambivalence, this vacillation, really shows this really pragmatic but also cautious approach

to engaging with Nibiru and the State Administration Council regime. Could I actually ask you then to sort of talk about the relationship between the PRC and the various stakeholders competing sides? We talked about the State Administration Council. We haven't really talked about NUG. We talked about the Three Brothers Alliance. There are lots of

players in Myanmar civil war right now? What's Beijing's relationship with them? I'll bow to Shona's expertise here because there are these, you know, the intervention that we see in the aftermath of Operation 1027 launched in late October last year, in October 2023 by different ethnic armed organizations, right, in northern Shan state. And of course, what we've seen there is what Shona's already kind of highlighted and alluded to,

Something that differs from China's usual non-intervention policy and the reticence that Beijing usually exercises in responding to the situation in Myanmar decisively. Could one of you just briefly let our audience know what Operation 1027 is?

In short, I would say that Operation 1027 was launched, well, it's named after the date on which it was launched, 27th of October 2023 last year. And this was an offensive launch by the Three Brotherhood Alliance. So that being said, the Arkan Army, the Myanmar National Democratic Alliance Army, as well as the Ta'ang National Liberation Army against the military regime in Myanmar.

And this operation was significant because these three groups, which are based on the China border, had previously opted largely but not entirely to stay out of the fray, whereas they had been fighting against the regime in most of the rest of Myanmar. And this operation was lauded as a huge success by many at the time. It was kind of seen as a turning point in the struggle of the resistance against the military regime. And

China's role in this was critical to the extent to which the Three Brotherhood Alliance succeeded. For one, a lot of these attacks were operated very, very close to the border, which is an area that China had previously been quite reticent to launch to the battlefield, if you like. But at the same time, I would also say that operations started to

kind of peter out at the beginning of this year and China was also critical to that. And so in January, China broke a ceasefire between the Brotherhood Alliance and the military regime, which has not necessarily held very firmly, but nonetheless, China, I think here was crucial both to the escalation of conflict in this theatre as well as to its diminishment, if you like.

which I think speaks to what Mo said earlier about there being kind of this feedback loop between centre and periphery on both sides of the border. I think it's also just important to note that since July, there has been an escalation in attacks in this theatre again, that people are calling the second phase of Operation 1027

And in this kind of period of escalation, what has happened has been a significant loss for the regime. However, it appears that this round of attacks was perhaps not quite what China had expected.

explicitly endorsed or had gone beyond the remit of what China wanted to see. This is also where we see a lot of the enmeshment of, I think, other interests like trade, for example, and China's concerns about cybercrime. So when, you know, parts of the Three Brotherhood Alliance regained control of, you know, northern parts of, you know,

Shan State, Guogang region. That prompted, I think, some renegotiation, some reconsideration of border trade arrangements, and I've seen also China's ongoing concern regarding cybercrime, which I guess prompted China's initial involvement in all of these, in Operation 1027 and so on. And of course, the repatriation and deportation of cybercrime leaders, all

of this is very much intertwined. But I think it's also important to highlight here about China's emphasis on stability in the border regions. Right, so how is this affecting all the different kinds of EAOs, I think organizations, that are on the ground? I mean, apart from the ones on the border area, I mean,

They're in many different parts of the country and sometimes seem to be acting in coordination, sometimes not. What's the effect of China's role on all these other actors? I can take that question. I think a lot of the work that I have done with AASS and my colleagues has tried to look at how Myanmar's civil war is really not a monolith.

And what's very important to understand about that is that depending on where armed groups are, depending on their relationships with local people, depending on their histories, they can have completely different relationships with one another. And while they may all be fighting against the military regime, they also have different goals, different ways of working.

So what does this mean? I think this means that the groups on the China border, specifically the Brotherhood Alliance and also the United Wazir Army, which I will come to in a second, have very different ways of working, at least, than armed groups in the rest of Myanmar. So what my, to me, one good expression of this is kind of Andrew Ong's work. So Andrew Ong

A political anthropologist has written a book called Stalemate, in which he tries to understand how these groups on the China border, specifically the United Wasi Army, but I'm going to extrapolate to other groups as well, work. And his idea is that these groups gain autonomy or they gain the autonomy they desire and the territorial control they desire by managing their relations with different actors.

This can include relations with other armed groups as well as with China, as well as with the National Unity Government. So coming back to your question about how China's role has affected EEOs outside of the Brotherhood Alliance for the U.S.A., the War Army, their stance has been one of kind of, as Andrew, I think, would say, a dynamic stalemate in which they've kind of stayed out of the fray. And this very much remains the case.

This is what is most advantageous to them. And I think many analysts would not see this changing in the near future, although there has been recent talks of the U.S. getting involved in kind of front lines a bit further away than usual. However, they recognize as well that without groups on the China border working in tandem to fight the regime, it will be very hard for kind of the regime to fall.

Nevertheless, by the interest, I suppose, of the fact that many of the people in the areas they control are, as Mo has mentioned, quite kind of skeptical of China's role towards Myanmar. Many of them see China as a backer of the regime. They're not willing to make any moves necessarily towards China. And then we also have the People's Defense Forces formed after the coup.

I think that this is somewhat in flux at the moment. So the PDFs are a very heterogeneous category. But what has been very significant about the attacks since July and August is that the Mandalay PDF has been involved, which is a group that is currently been trained and under the control of the TNLA, which is a group that is part of the Brotherhood Alliance.

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So we've got a bunch of actors in Myanmar, but they're not the only ones who are stakeholders. Myanmar has neighbours that are keenly interested in what happens inside, besides the PRC. There is India, there's Bangladesh, there's Thailand on the other side, and of course, there's ASEAN. So how do these actors see China's role? How do they interact with the PRC over the civil war?

Right. That's a very interesting question, Ian, but I think that would also stray into the areas of these respective countries' bilateral relations and interests and interactions with China, which I will be the first to admit I'm not an expert of everyone's interactions with China yet.

With that caveat, of course, what we have seen since 2021 at the level of the United Nations, we've seen China agreeing, as did the United States in September 2021, if I recall correctly, to allow the status quo continuation of Myanmar's ambassador to the United Nations who had been appointed by the National League for Democracy government in

And we've also seen that the UN Security Council resolution vote in December 2022, which China abstained rather than exercise its veto on that UN Security Council resolution. I think it's 2669, if I recall correctly, calling for immediate cessation of violence and atrocities in Myanmar.

And at the ASEAN level, what we've seen also since late 2021, after ASEAN made that decision to restrict the State Administration Council's attendance at high-level summits to a non-political representative, China was the first dialogue partner to abide by that ASEAN decision when it convened.

via Zoom virtually, the special ASEAN-China commemorative summit. So I think broadly, that's how I would see it. How does China relate to the other external actors, interested actors outside Myanmar regarding the developments in Myanmar? I think it would depend on the relationship that China has with each of these states,

and the complex bilateral interactions that go on. Maybe if we zoom into here in Southeast Asia, I think we should also then try to view this in the context of that practical acceptance that most countries in Southeast Asia have, that China is the most influential economic and also political or strategic power in this region.

even if that reality sits uneasily with many countries in Southeast Asia. Shona, how about you? Do you have anything to add on what you see as the external interested parties? How do they sort of see China's role in the Myanmar civil war?

I think Mo really is the expert on this and I'm lucky that I don't have to get to the weeds of these kind of foreign policy. But what maybe I can add is I think there's something that we haven't talked about enough, which is the role of the cybercrime industry. It has been mentioned a few times, but we have not gotten into kind of the weeds of this. I don't think we can in the movement of this podcast, but it's very important to see that as a contributing factor to what relations are between China and Myanmar and potentially the rest of the world.

The reason I highlight the cybercrime industry is because I think this is of interest to international organizations, as well as the US and other countries, simply because this industry is something that kind of has victims all around the world and is also employing or trafficking people from various different places to work.

both along the China-Myanmar and the Thai-Myanmar border. But ever since the Myanmar coup, many of these operations have moved to areas of Myanmar in which the SEC has not exercised control or on which the SEC has exercised control through a proxy or has kind of only had tenuous control. Essentially, this is an industry that has

I suppose, really profited from the ongoing instability and conflict in Myanmar. Just briefly touch on what types of activities, the cybercrime, I mean, there's the scamming, there's the money laundering, because not everybody might know that background. You know, I mean, this is something that, again, it's an ongoing concern. It's really risen to prominence after the pandemic because it was also exacerbated to a certain extent by the pandemic.

And why it's, I think, a very pertinent area of concern, you know, the rise of cybercrime in Myanmar, if you will, especially after the 2021 coup, is because it's placed Myanmar in the spotlight.

as this emerging hub, if you will, for the kind of transnational online scams, gambling operations. Shona's highlighted very well the locus and focus of where these operations were. And I think we need to look at this also in the context of

the Mekong sub-regions history of transnational crime and illicit economic activities. You know, I think most of us are familiar with the Golden Triangle area, of course. So, I mean, Shona mentioned that it's been going on.

It didn't just suddenly appear. It's been going on. But I guess when the pandemic happened, when the lockdowns happened, that's when I think the situation was exacerbated. And some previous ethnic armed organizations that entered into agreements or pacts with the Myanmar military became their militias or border guard forces. Also involved in these events

types of activities, you see. I just want to also just return to, you know, really what do these scams look like? Because I think this is also important to China, because most of the, a lot of the victims of these scams were people in China, and therefore this is an issue of kind of domestic concern for China and not just one off-border security purely. So what does that look like? I mean, these scams could take a whole variety of forms, and I think there is just so much kind of innovation going on.

But, for example, one might be subject to kind of false investment opportunities. There's kind of a certain specific form of scam called pig butchering scams in which scammers kind of pose as rich and good looking people and find targets on social media, eventually also kind of cultivating them to create false investments.

There are romance scams, there's the impersonation of officials, there's use of cryptocurrency. And so really, these scams run the whole gamut. There's also the kidnapping and the forced labor element. Could you just briefly touch on that? Yes, absolutely. One thing I would say before we go into that, I do want to add that, as Mo said, this is a situation that is not only rapidly developing, but it's also incredibly hard to research, right? These are areas that are not...

not under the control of, you know, of any government often. And often they're also not strictly under the control of resistance organizations that are open to foreigners coming in because they, or journalists coming in because of the illicit nature of the activities. So what we know is often based on kind of testimonies of survivors, witnesses, and people who in some way have been willing to speak about what they've gone through.

And so, yes, these kind of scam centers run, employ, you know, thousands of workers who allegedly come from not just from China or from Myanmar, but from various places in Southeast Asia and beyond.

And on top of that, allegedly as well, people have been sold from one scam center to another. Therefore, one element of profit generation is not just about the scams, but the kind of forced labor and trafficking of people. In terms of forced labor as well, the conditions in these scam centers are known to be very, very dire, in which people kind of work incredibly long hours, are kind of disciplined incredibly harshly if they don't follow kind of

certain strict regimens for training and for strict regimens for producing profits and

victims, and so on. Could you both sort of share with us what sort of constructive role you think the PRC can play in the conflict and the chaos, really, that is today's Myanmar? If we look at the stance that China has taken towards the 2021 coup in Myanmar and the State Administration Council regime resulting from that coup, it's really important to

to look at how, you know, what China's position and stance and responses are, because that's crucial to the prospects for Myanmar's return to that, you know, path of democratic transition that was interrupted with the 2021 coup. So, yeah,

Why is it important, you might ask? It's because I think, and I hope Shona can chime in later too, I think the stakes are now higher for China than in the past. It's really, you know, it has much more to lose, I think, from this political turmoil in Myanmar that has ensued after the coup. This is why we see China's, you know, interest in keeping communication channels open with China

a lot of the key political stakeholder groups in Myanmar. The retreat of China's relations, if you will, with the Myanmar military is also a factor that's probably now adding also to the pronouncements that we are seeing and hearing from the State Administration Council regime in Naypyidaw with regard to China's role or their perceptions of

China's role and the geopolitical situation. Looking at how China's approach to Myanmar crisis has shifted, you know, particularly in the dynamics following Operation 1027 in October 2023, and now the phase two of 1027 launched in June this year, I think it gives us all pause to think about how we can appeal to China's interests in a stable Myanmar,

Yeah, thank you, Mo. I don't have that much to add. I think that, well, firstly, the question of what constructive role looks like depends on who won us. I agree with Mo. I think that China's current stance is shaping up to be kind of one of high cost and low return. I think straddling kind of both sides, kind of being somewhat ambivalent to its regime has not

you know, in the last more than three years served China all that well. None of its planned projects have, you know, really come to fruition, despite kind of swirling rumors all the time that these projects will continue. Instead, what we have seen is kind of a booming cyber scam industry that has put

Chinese people at risk. I think that this is also why many actors in Myanmar at the moment do not see it as something constructive to work with China. And the question of China really potentially engaging with these groups potentially to a more stable future is a question not of when

the chaos is over. It's a question of now, especially since we see that three years since the coup, the regime does not seem to be consolidating control over Myanmar. Thank you so much, both of you, for your insights. I think you've really helped shed light on a very critical

complex and, of course, highly contentious and for many people, deadly and devastating issue. So with that, I'd like to thank both of you again, Mo and Shona, for joining us for this episode. I'm really appreciative of your time and your insights.

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