Wanbao copper mine to suspend operations until after election

A Chinese-backed copper mining company has chosen to cease work temporarily at its project sites in Sagaing Region’s Salingyi Township until the junta’s phased December and January elections have passed, locals and former employees said. The company reportedly notified its workers that the pause in operations will last from the first week of December through the end of February 2026, citing “difficulties in obtaining fuel to operate machinery”, according to Myanmar Now's sources. Despite the rationale offered by the company, employees and Saglingyi Township locals suspect the real reason may be the increased risk of attacks by resistance forces who oppose the junta’s plans for elections and may seek to sabotage them. The Myanmar military has stationed troops near the project site to guard it, with locals and resistance forces accusing the soldiers of firing frequently on neighbouring villages using heavy artillery and launching ground manoeuvres from inside the project compound. Sagaing Region-based resistance forces also regularly launch assaults on the junta forces at the project site, they said. Three such attacks occurred in September and October of this year. Having resumed operations at the site at the beginning of the year, Wanbao began winding down its work at the site last week, shutting down most of its onsite offices including the mining department. “The entire mining department is closed. It’s suspended. The copper production factory still has some activity, but overall the site has gone quiet,” said a former Wanbao employee, who joined the anti-coup Civil Disobedience Movement (CDM) to oppose the military after it took power in 2021. While most have returned home, a few workers reportedly have remained onsite. “Some are being paid and directed to do errand work inside. They haven’t been assigned core work like operating machinery or driving vehicles. Those who want to go home can return,” the former Wanbao employee and CDM participant explained. Myanmar Now contacted the Myanmar Wanbao company for comment about its reasons for closing the copper mining project site but received no response. Thousands of residents reportedly fled their homes in 10 villages around the project site in October of this year as fighting intensified between resistance forces and the troops stationed on the Wanbao compound. Resistance forces had been launching shells into the compound, with the junta troops returning fire using heavy artillery and hitting the villages. “After the junta troops took up their position at the Wanbao compound and began conducting manoeuvres in the area, people from about 10 nearby villages had to flee for more than a month,” a member of the Salingyi Township People’s Administration Organisation said. “Some haven’t returned home yet to Hpaung Ka Tar village, which is adjacent to the compound. They don’t dare,” the administrator said. “Every other day or so at night, they bombard villages with civilians.” In December of this year, the military began deploying forces to the checkpoint at Junction 51, a major road intersection near the project site, among other operations outside the site compound. At Junction 51, the soldiers have inspected and detained travellers, including three men coming from Nyaung Pin Gyi on a motorcycle. The junta authorities later released two prisoners but the other remains in custody, locals said. “The army is acting differently from before,” the CMD participant and former Wanbao employee said. “In the past, they only worked to control the company compound. They only conducted outside patrols to protect their supply routes. Now they seem to have become more aggressive.” The armed resistance controls most of Salingyi Township’s rural areas, with the junta forces controlling urban wards in Salingyi as well as Nyaung Pin Gyi village, the copper project compound, and a few neighbouring areas. A member of the resistance-connected Salingyi Township People’s Administration Organisation said the administration was forming a committee to lead opposition to the continuation of the copper project, but no details about the committee’s plans or work have been disclosed. Despite the anti-junta resistance’s strength there, Salingyi is among the townships where the military regime has announced plans to hold elections. In the Salingyi Township elections, widely dismissed as a ploy to rebrand the military dictatorship as legitimate, only the military’s proxy Union Solidarity and Development Party will be fielding candidates for the Pyithu Hluttaw—Myanmar's lower parliamentary chamber—and for the Sagaing Region legislature, the Regional Hluttaw. The Wanbao copper project, which had closed down following the 2021 coup, resumed operations this year. At the time, it was able to take advantage of the desperate economic circumstances faced by many CDM participants and recruit them back to the project despite their opposition to the junta’s profiting from it. The junta has gained hundreds of millions of dollars in revenue from the Wanbao Myanmar copper project, which is jointly owned by the military-operated company Myanmar Economic Holdings Limited and by Wanbao, a subsidiary of the Chinese state-owned arms manufacturer Norinco. According to a 2021 report by Australia-based monitoring group Publish What You Pay, the junta gained US $417 million from the Letpadaung Mountain copper project in Sagaing Region and $187 million from two other projects. Operation 1027, an anti-junta offensive campaign in which ethnic armed organisations captured whole towns and hundreds of junta bases in northern Shan State and other areas, slowed due to intervention by the Chinese government, which pressured the armed groups into ceasefire agreements favourable to the regime. After intervening on the junta’s behalf to stop the hostilities, Chinese investors and entities have demanded that the junta take whatever measures are necessary to secure and protect their business interests and employees.

Wanbao copper mine to suspend operations until after election

One of many infrastructure and development projects in Myanmar supported by Chinese investment, the mining site in that resumed operations this year in Salingyi Township is now shutting down again until February

Subscribe for full access

Across a border and into a war: A Karenni leader’s final journey

When going home is impossible: Myanmar nationals find solace in Singapore’s Peninsula Plaza

The Russian general behind Moscow’s decades-long military courtship of Myanmar

Explainer: Who are the companies and cronies backing Myanmar junta leader’s Thailand visit?

Subscribe for full access

Related Articles

Dozens of Myanmar junta POWs escape detention in Chin State

Only one of 20 junta flotilla vessels able to return from Bhamo: KIA

Regime destroy oil wells in Myaing Township, cutting resistance profits and jobs

Poland blocks sale of 250 tonnes of contaminated Myanmar rice