China supporting junta election despite widespread renunciation

Myanmar’s military-run elections are being pilloried abroad and shunned at home, but neighbouring China has emerged as an enthusiastic backer of the pariah poll. International monitors have dismissed the vote starting Sunday as a charade to rebrand Myanmar’s military rule since a 2021 coup, which triggered a civil war. But Beijing’s brokerage has secured watershed truces and retreats by anti-regime ethnic armed groups—turning the tide of the conflict and strengthening the junta’s hand ahead of the weeks-long vote. Once backing opposition factions, analysts say China now throws its weight behind the military and its polls as Beijing pursues its own private interests in Myanmar—and even the reordering of its leadership. “It’s as if an outsider were involved in our family issues,” complained a resident of northern Lashio city, once the anti-junta ethnic armed groups’ biggest war prize but returned to the junta via Beijing’s intervention in April. “I want to sort out my family matters by ourselves,” said the 30-year-old woman, declining to be named for security reasons. "I don’t like other people involved." ‘No state collapse’ Myanmar’s military cancelled democracy nearly five years ago, detaining civilian leader Aung San Suu Kyi and alleging her electoral victory was secured by massive voter fraud. The country plunged into civil war as pro-democracy activists mounted an armed resistance as rag-tag guerrillas, fighting alongside formidable ethnic minority armies that have long resisted central rule. China’s reaction to the military takeover was initially muted, but the explosion of internet scam centres along the China-Myanmar border threw a lever. The massively profitable online fraud factories ensnared legions of Chinese citizens—both as trafficked, unwilling workers and as targets in elaborate romance and business cryptocurrency cons. Irked by the junta’s failure to crack down, Beijing abandoned its agnosticism, giving at least its tacit backing to an offensive by an alliance of anti-junta armed groups, monitors say. The “Three Brotherhood Alliance” trio of ethnic minority armies won stunning advances, including Lashio in the summer of 2024—the first capture of a state capital and a regional military command. “What I’ve seen is that China can control outside organisations,” said another 30-year-old Lashio resident, also speaking anonymously for security reasons. The anti-junta fighters marched on to the brink of Myanmar’s second city, Mandalay, before Beijing pumped the brakes, said Morgan Michaels, a research fellow at the International Institute for Strategic Studies think tank. “Beijing’s policy is no state collapse,” he told AFP. “When it looked like the military was going to collapse, it equated that with state collapse and so it stepped in to prevent that.” Reshuffling ranks China may have settled on backing the military, but Michaels says there are terminal doubts about military chief Min Aung Hlaing, who plunged the country into an intractable crisis. “I think there’s a general sense that he’s stubborn, not particularly good at what he does,” said Michaels. “They would like to see him moved aside or at least have his power diluted.” Many monitors, including United Nations expert Tom Andrews, have described the election as a “sham”. Ethnic armed groups and resistance fighters defying military rule have pledged to block the vote from their territories, deriding it as choreography allowing Min Aung Hlaing to prolong his rule by wearing a civilian sash. But the nominal return to civilian rule will hedge Min Aung Hlaing’s power, said Michaels, forcing him to choose between the presidency or armed forces chief—roles he has held in tandem under military rule. “It probably will result in his power being diluted or him having to make some sort of compromise,” said the analyst. After the junta started to lay out an election timetable, Min Aung Hlaing enjoyed his first post-coup meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping in May. Meanwhile, China began to defuse the “Three Brotherhood Alliance”—peeling away two of its factions based along its border with truces. The Ta’ang National Liberation Army agreed to an armistice in October, after the Myanmar National Democratic Alliance Army handed back once bitterly contested Lashio in April. “I feel lost as a citizen,” said the Lashio woman who requested anonymity. “Some of my friends cannot come back. Some have already died. They are not in the world anymore.” A Chinese foreign ministry spokesman told AFP: “China supports Myanmar in broadly uniting domestic political forces, steadily advancing its domestic political agenda and restoring stability and development.” Lashing back at foreign criticism of the poll last week, junta spokesman Zaw Min Tun told reporters: “It is not being held for the international community.” But he said that “partner countries” are “assisting and supporting the election”—doing so “out of a desire for the betterment of Myanmar”.

China supporting junta election despite widespread renunciation

Amid condemnation inside and outside Myanmar and its own purported doubts about the military’s fitness for rule, Beijing has given crucial support to the junta generals in holding the election

Subscribe for full access

Between resistance and the ballot box: Assessing the second phase of Myanmar’s junta-controlled elections

‘Our souls are in Myanmar’: Voices from a refugee camp

Under fire and deep in debt: The reality facing Myanmar’s farmers

Security risks impede haphazard election preparations in Sagaing Region

Resistance arrests deputy leader of pro-junta militia in Mandalay Region

Myanmar junta charges detained Yangon food courier with terrorist financing, sedition

Land prices soar in western Karenni as war displaces thousands

Former junta minister faces legal threat after alleged unauthorised meeting with diplomats

Resistance blocks junta reinforcements’ path to base on Rakhine-Magway border

KIA set to fully resume rare earth mining in captured ‘special region’

Myanmar junta airstrikes kill three civilians sheltering in Rakhine State monastery

Myanmar’s factories cling to life as power shortages persist

Bought Out or Seized: Mandalay farmers face impossible choices amid land grab

Myanmar junta partners with Chinese firm to build natural gas terminal despite Rakhine State conflict

Thai officials call on Myanmar regime to crack down on fraud, trafficking gangs on Thai-Karen State border

Myanmar military continues to lose ground to anti-junta forces in northern Shan State

Despite escalating violence, Myanmar junta leader says elections will proceed

NUG-founded bank set to sell shares to meet ‘emergency needs’

Myanmar’s junta bears ‘sole responsibility’ for Suu Kyi’s health—NLD

Karenni youth fight for freedom at the cost of their lives and limbs

The mothers of the Magway resistance

A Myanmar artist finds freedom behind bars—by portraying prisoners’ oppression

As Myanmar’s revolution beckons, a new breed of activist photographers heeds the call

The man behind the Myanmar junta’s campaign of terror in Sagaing

Authorities tighten restrictions on passport process for Myanmar nationals in Thailand

Subscribe for full access

Related Articles