China’s deadly divide-and-rule tactics in Myanmar risk shock waves across region

Things fall apart, if you let them – and ethnically, religiously, ideologically fractured Myanmar, formerly Burma, has never been a model of harmonious, integrated nationhood. Yet since the 2021 military coup and ensuing civil war, new and old divisions have grown rapidly. Western and neighbouring states supporting a democratic restoration now face a more fundamental, urgent challenge: how to prevent Myanmar’s anarchic disintegration.
A break-up would send destabilising shock waves coursing across the Bay of Bengal, Bangladesh and all of south-east Asia. The humanitarian implications for its 54 million people are dire. A collapse would boost separatist forces and non-state actors elsewhere. And it would severely dent China’s claims to regional leadership. If President Xi Jinping cannot manage Myanmar, what price Beijing’s superpower pretensions?
Reasons to fear a fatal implosion proliferate. About two-thirds of the country, including borders, is now beyond the control of the junta, led by Senior Gen Min Aung Hlaing. A sweeping offensive begun last October by northern ethnic armed groups has rocked a desperate, illegitimate regime whose writ is confined increasingly to the capital, Naypyidaw, and urban areas.
Crimes against humanity, war crimes and “horrific levels of brutality” are escalating at an alarming rate, the UN says. Its latest report details systematic military killings of civilians, torture, rape, illegal detentions and school and hospital bombings. Thousands of people have died and more than three million are displaced, a 50% increase in six months. Junta forces are mostly to blame, but some ethnic militias are culpable, too.
Gruesome atrocities occasionally push neglected Myanmar into the international headlines. One occurred this month when up to 200 unarmed civilians fleeing into Bangladesh to escape fighting in Buddhist-majority Rakhine state were killed in drone attacks. Most belonged to the Rohingya Muslim minority, target of the military’s 2016-17 genocide. This time their attackers were local Arakan Army separatists.
“The Myanmar state is fragmenting as ethnic armed groups consolidate control of their homelands, while in the country’s centre a weak regime clings to power and launches revenge air attacks on territories it has lost. Further fragmentation seems inevitable,” the independent International Crisis Group (ICG) warned recently.
Although flailing Min Aung Hlaing might soon be ousted, the regime was not about to fall, the ICG argued, partly because its many disparate ethnic militia opponents lacked a unifying national vision. At the same time, post-coup, pro-democracy resistance forces, represented by the federalist National Unity Government and its armed wing, the People’s Defence Force, lacked sufficient firepower to prevail.
Even if Myanmar’s demise as a unitary state is not imminent, this prospect of unceasing warfare and instability greatly alarms China. Contemplating a 1,250-mile shared frontier, it worries about security, negative impacts on its huge trading and infrastructure interests and unchecked cross-border criminality. Human suffering seems less important. Visiting Naypyidaw this month, China’s foreign minister, Wang Yi, said Beijing “opposes chaos and conflicts” and urged the regime to “safeguard Chinese personnel and projects”.
China is part of the problem. Although the junta has promised elections, Beijing evidently has no intention of helping restore democracy or creating a level playing field for the opposition.
Like the vanquished British imperialists it so reviles, Beijing is playing a duplicitous game of divide-and-rule, covertly backing ethnic groups where they control border areas in order to secure its investments and geostrategic interests. Radio Free Asia reported that Chinese artillery opened fire on junta forces inside Myanmar this month in defence of an insurgent base. It wasn’t the first time.
It is also reported that October’s offensive, known as Operation 1027 and led by the Three Brotherhood Alliance, a coalition of northern ethnic militias, some with communist sympathies, was coordinated with China’s security services – even as Beijing, along with its Russian ally, continued to supply arms to the junta. In return, the alliance promised Beijing it would crack down on billion-dollar Myanmar-based online scams and people trafficking from China.
As the advancing insurgents seized up to 200 army bases and border crossings, the junta, infuriated by Beijing’s machinations, reportedly authorised anti-China protests in several cities. Switching again, China announced in December that it had miraculously brokered a ceasefire and offered to facilitate peace talks. But nobody trusts anyone. Fighting resumed in earnest in June.
Far from acting as honest broker, China is likely to persist with divide-and-rule tactics while looking for advantage. “China is continuing its long-term strategy of hedging its bets, which means that it will engage with a number of stakeholders and try to retain influence over as many factions in Myanmar as possible,” Hunter Marston, an Australia-based analyst, told Voice of America.
This self-serving approach by the region’s most powerful state, coupled with the deteriorating internal security and humanitarian situation and a lack of any credible peace process, suggests that Myanmar’s crisis is waxing terminal.
To prevent the worst, the ICG argues, Association of Southeast Asian Nations (Asean) neighbours and international and multilateral aid donors such as Britain, the former colonial power, must overcome their reluctance to deal directly with “sub-national entities” – meaning the ethnic armed groups controlling most of the country.
Yet effectively recognising such groups, some of which are abusive, authoritarian and anti-democratic, as legitimate rulers of autonomous fiefdoms is risky. It could hasten the very outcome that Myanmar’s friends most fear – a descent into chaos and ultimate disintegration of the state.
What else might be done? Sanctions should be expanded and enforced. Diplomatic pressure via Asean and the UN should be intensified. Burma Campaign UK has good ideas worth supporting, including disinvestment and a ban on sales of aviation fuel. More than anything, the Myanmar emergency must be prioritised. In April, Barbara Woodward, a UK ambassador, told the UN security council: “We will not allow Myanmar to become a forgotten crisis”. Britain must keep its word.
Simon Tisdall is the Observer’s Foreign Affairs Commentator