Myanmar Regime Boss Downplays China Dependency, Shadow Govt’s Beijing Ties, and More
Min Aung Hlaing downplays dependency on China
“We don’t rely solely on China,” putschist president Min Aung Hlaing told Time Magazine this week when asked if he was concerned about Myanmar’s dependency on Beijing.
In the explosive interview—verbatim excerpts of which were published by regime media in an attempted “correction”—Min Aung Hlaing stressed that the neighbors “cannot stand separately from one another.”
He conceded that while Myanmar engages with many countries, cooperation with China is the most extensive, both because of geography and because Beijing is one of his largest investors. But he pointed to ties with India, Thailand, Vietnam, Russia, and Belarus in seeking to downplay reports of over‑reliance.
At any rate, it was all the fault of Western sanctions that have left Myanmar with few options but to deepen business with Beijing, he said. He singled out the China–Myanmar Economic Corridor (CMEC) as proof of Chinese investment driving Myanmar’s economic development, neglecting to mention that much of the planned route runs through territory now in resistance hands.
Beijing propped up the military regime when it appeared on the verge of collapse in 2024, and Chinese President Xi Jinping welcomed Min Aung Hlaing in Beijing, offering much-needed legitimacy to his putschist regime.
NUG insists it’s still in contact with China
National Unity Government (NUG) Deputy Foreign Minister David Gum Awng has claimed that the shadow government maintains engagement with China. Though this is not visible to the public, it “exists at different levels,” he said.
“It is not the case that we have absolutely no engagement with China,” the official told anti-regime group People’s Goal in an interview posted this week. But he admitted the channels, methods and extent of such contacts differ markedly from the NUG’s open dealings with ASEAN and Western countries.
In January 2024, the NUG Foreign Ministry issued a 10-point position statement on China vowing to foster a genuine “pauk-phaw” (fraternal) relationship between the two countries, uphold the One China Policy, and safeguard Chinese investments made before the February 1, 2021 coup. NUG Foreign Minister Zin Mar Aung said the policy is necessary to counter perceptions that the NUG is “Western‑controlled” and show its diplomacy is balance.
But Beijing seems to have placed its bets firmly on the unpopular military regime, using its leverage with powerful ethnic armed organizations that dominate the borderlands to pressure them to distance themselves from the NUG and its revolutionary allies.
China’s chief interest lies in safeguarding trade through the 2,129‑km border and overland access to the Bay of Bengal. But in publicly touting its principle of non-interference, Beijing is in fact a decisive player in Myanmar’s peace process, or lack of one.
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