Former senior members of Myanmar’s once-dreaded Military Intelligence (MI) travelled to Beijing earlier this week on a mission that appeared to be related to junta chief Min Aung Hlaing’s upcoming visit to China.
Retired brigadier-general Thein Swe, 81, who once served as deputy to notorious MI chief Khin Nyunt, was in the Chinese capital on Tuesday to meet with the heads of two think tanks as part of a mission to discuss the two countries’ “mutual concerns,” according to the Taihe Institute, one of the organisations involved.
He was accompanied by former colonel Hla Min—another senior MI officer from the 1990s who also served as spokesperson for the regime that ruled Myanmar until 2011—Chinese media reported.
Both men were identified only as representatives of the Paragon Institute, a previously unknown organisation described in reports on the visit as a “diplomatic think tank.”
Chinese online media outlet QQ reported that during a meeting with the chair of the Charhar Institute, a group that promotes “progress in China’s foreign policies,” the two sides discussed next year’s 75th anniversary of the establishment of diplomatic relations as well as “recent developments of ethnic armed forces in northern Myanmar.”
However, a subsequent edit removed any mention of armed groups, and instead refers more broadly to “the domestic situation in Myanmar.”
This diplomatic outreach coincides with the Myanmar junta’s struggles in the country’s northeast, where it has lost control of a number of key towns near the Chinese border to an alliance of ethnic armed groups.
It also comes just a week before Min Aung Hlaing’s planned visit to the Chinese city of Kunming to attend the Mekong Region Summit on November 6-7—his first trip to China since seizing power in a coup in 2021.
As its concern over the situation in Myanmar grows, China has made clear that it does not want to see Min Aung Hlaing’s regime collapse. Leaked documents seen by Myanmar Now show that Beijing has been using its influence to pressure anti-junta groups to end their ongoing offensive.
As figures associated with Khin Nyunt, Thein Swe and Hla Min make unlikely emissaries for the current regime. Both men were among those imprisoned when former dictator Than Shwe ousted Khin Nyunt and dismantled the MI in 2004.
However, in December 2021, Min Aung Hlaing paid a personal visit to Khin Nyunt, in a move seen by some as signalling a break with his mentor Than Shwe, who handpicked him as his successor as armed forces commander-in-chief in 2011.
David Mathieson, a long-time independent analyst on Myanmar, described the former MI officers’ visit to Beijing as highly suspicious, noting that the invention of the Paragon Institute seemed particularly dubious.
“No one has ever heard of it. It’s the kind of ‘front’ that an intelligence officer conjures as a cover for something more sinister,” he said.
