Five years after General Min Aung Hlaing led the Tatmadaw in a coup d’etat against Aung San Suu Kyi’s government, the Myanmar civil war continues. The junta is estimated to control only one-fifth of the state, while resistance forces control half of Myanmar.
In April 2026, the election consolidated Min Aung Hlaing’s political control as the pro-military parliament delivered a landslide victory to formalize the junta’s power. During Hlaing’s inauguration in Naypyidaw, he stated: “Myanmar has returned to the path of democracy and is heading towards a better future . . . .” Following Hlaing’s comments, the military junta pardoned former civil servants and political prisoners.
The pardons were an attempt to convince the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) to reinstate Myanmar’s full political participation. ASEAN suspended junta-led Myanmar from the multilateral organization after the coup. ASEAN considers the recent elections illegitimate, and it has scrutinized the pardons as performative. In response to the scrutiny, the junta rejected repeated requests to end the military offensive and denied the ASEAN special envoy access to Aung San Suu Kyi. The junta’s rule of Myanmar undermines Southeast Asia’s political cohesion, creates economic insecurity for China, and alienates the Burmese people from their own resources.
Beijing’s Hedging Strategy
Beijing’s economic interests are a primary reason why it maintains relations with the junta. The China-Myanmar Economic Corridor (CMEC) is highly important to Beijing because deep-sea port access and oil and gas pipelines run from southeastern Yunnan across Myanmar into the Bay of Bengal, providing an alternative to the Strait of Malacca trade route to the Indian Ocean. The outbreaks of violence directly affect the economic stability and energy security China has invested in.
China increased its diplomatic engagement with the junta, seeking an end to the conflict. Beijing brokered ceasefires — temporary truces — and maintains relations with the NLD. The visit by Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi likely focused on shared security interests since the junta uses Chinese-manufactured arms, such as bombs for the junta’s air force, which are used in the military campaign, including indiscriminate attacks on civilians. Bilateral talks between the junta and Beijing focus on the junta’s survival and shared security goals.
Hlaing likely views Beijing’s support as a crucial political and economic buffer against Western sanctions and a way to bolster military resources. China recognizes that fighting between the junta and resistance groups threatens its infrastructure investments. China manages diplomatic relations with the junta and informally with the various pro-democracy resistance groups to retain influence. As Beijing pursues de-escalation in Myanmar, it seeks guarantees for its investments. China’s strategic hedging maximizes diplomatic channels to protect its interests and reduce the impact of political instability.
However, China’s prioritization of security near the shared border highlights the limits of its engagement. China has not signaled any intention to end relations with the junta. It has little reason to end that relationship because it does not pursue regime change even though it supports de-escalation. Strategic hedging to maintain influence over economic resources is second to none for Beijing. Beijing is not interested in regime change regardless of whether a democratic Myanmar is more favorable to long-term economic security in Southeast Asia. Beijing’s unwillingness to take on unilateral risk by actively supporting regime change, instead of strategic hedging, does not align with its own hemispheric principle of non-intervention.
Some voices argue that China should increase its involvement, but Beijing’s real focus might be to stop further collapse of Myanmar. Beijing views using its military as a breach of its non-intervention principle. Beijing does not have a hemispheric ambition, and any use of the PLA could deteriorate Myanmar further into violence, resulting in irreversible loss of Chinese economic assets.
Limits of Multilateralism
In 2021, ASEAN established a five-point consensus peace plan calling for an end to the violence, pursuing constructive dialogue, providing aid, and sending a special envoy to visit Myanmar. Today, ASEAN upholds the five-point consensus and excludes junta leaders from high-level meetings. Human Rights Watch categorizes the implementation of the five-point consensus as a failure due to the continuity of the junta’s state-sanctioned violence.
Understanding how ASEAN member states view independence helps identify the limitations of consensus-building. ASEAN Centrality is the founding principle that established the institution as a forum for Southeast Asian states as the primary multilateral political body. ASEAN’s goal is to remain neutral, thereby rejecting the U.S.-China rivalry and India as regional hegemonic actors. ASEAN’s collective authority aims to preserve autonomy in Southeast Asian security affairs.
The ASEAN charter lacks formal enforcement mechanisms, which contributes to regional instability. ASEAN adopted a Non-Interference Doctrine that fails to promote democratic institutions across Southeast Asia and prioritizes sovereignty over human rights, which derails democratic development by creating a false choice. Sovereignty and democracy are two values that can be upheld at once, but engagement with the junta requires a better strategy.
Two months after formalizing his power, Min Aung Hlaing agreed to the five-point consensus, but the parliament rejected it, framing it as foreign interference. The pro-military parliament does not see Myanmar’s reintegration into ASEAN as maintaining its sovereignty. The junta views ASEAN’s diplomacy as conformity to a foreign body rather than de-escalation efforts. The junta views de-escalation as a threat to its survival.
Furthermore, Myanmar’s instability created an existential threat to ASEAN as the member states of Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore, and the Philippines repeatedly demanded an end to the violence and restoration of democracy. At the same time, Thailand, Laos, Cambodia, and Vietnam have emphasized the non-interference principle. The split in ASEAN created informal bloc politics, undermining the multilateral institution’s decision-making ability. The lack of consensus on Myanmar reflects ASEAN’s limits as a multinational organization to provide diplomatic solutions in Southeast Asia. Successful diplomacy would ideally pressure the Tatmadaw into military restraint.
ASEAN needs to either adjust to a minilateral framework or collaborate with China to gain leverage on Myanmar. The lack of enforcement mechanisms is the achilles heel of consensus-based diplomacy. ASEAN member states may also argue that collaborating with China on Myanmar would undermine the non-interference and sovereignty principles it claims to represent. However, collaboration does not always mean capitulation, as ASEAN has sustained economic ties with China.
The most acceptable areas of collaboration between ASEAN and China include diplomatic and economic tools of foreign policy. It remains to be seen if China has the political will to increase its ceasefire diplomacy. China may refuse to take on more risk to its economic interests in Myanmar. Potential fallout between China and the Tatmadaw could reduce China’s influence over its own resources.
ASEAN could examine the existing ceasefires brokered by China and how its hedging strategy with both the Tatmadaw and the resistance forces could create a lasting peace. Diplomatic collaboration in this case depends on whether China is willing to take on unilateral responsibility beyond its current, more comfortable position as a concerned neighbor.
Primitive Accumulation
In this civil war, primitive accumulation manifests as resource extraction by the Tatmadaw. The Tatmadaw’s control of the state originated from an ultra-nationalist desire to control Myanmar. While the junta frames its survival as a form of self-determination, the military fails to win the hearts and minds of its own people, as exclusion feeds the junta’s power. The junta’s perversion of the state monopoly on industry extends survival by concentrating wealth among the military officer class. The junta’s pattern of ethnic cleansing and economic repression created an intra-state dynamic enforced by authoritarian rule.
Neoliberal economic reform enriched the junta and propelled corruption as Western sanctions impacted working-class Burmese rather than the Tatmadaw. You cannot simply adopt neoliberal economic reform into a state and assume stabilization will follow. The alienation of working people from the state’s resources, whether by displacement, land theft, military violence, or denial of legal citizenship, is a variant of primitive accumulation.
The civil war between the resistance groups and the junta reveals a secondary nature of class conflict beyond who controls the democratic process in a state’s government. The Burmese people are willing to put their lives on the line to end authoritarian rule, including military rule that uses the power of the state for self-enrichment. The unsuccessful attempts at conflict resolution from multilateral institutions are rooted in the limitations of diplomacy.
The pathway to peace is narrow and hinges on whether or not the resistance forces can continue to sustain a military offensive to permanently decapitate the junta. A healthy democracy in Myanmar would undoubtedly advance ASEAN and China. If the resistance groups continue to pursue a pro-democratic future for Myanmar, then returning civilian control to the government is the right path. Resistance groups have made it clear that a democratic future in Myanmar is worth fighting for.
Editorial contributions by Rachael Rhine Milliard
The views and information contained in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily represent those of The Asia Cable.
