China has provided a revolving door for diplomatic talks with senior leaders of Myanmar’s beleaguered junta, as their latest six-month state of emergency is due to expire at the end of July amid speculation that elections are back on the agenda.
Among them were former President Thein Sein and the military’s No. 2 Soe Win. Then, earlier this week, it was the turn of four political parties – all pro-junta – to send representatives on a goodwill visit to China, at the invitation of the Chinese Communist Party.
The scuttlebutt is pretty much unanimous: China is piling on the pressure, pushing the junta into staging long-promised elections which were initially made when Senior Gen. Min Aung Hlaing ousted an elected government in early 2021 and tipped the country into civil war.
But political success is proving as elusive as wins on the battlefield for a military that has lost control of large amounts of territory in the ethnic states that surround its heartland in the Irrawaddy Basin, which includes the cities of Yangon, Mandalay, and Naypyidaw.
Making matters worse for the military is the prospect that Mandalay will soon come under attack by ethnic armed organizations (EAOs) and anti-regime People’s Defense Force (PDF) militias. More than 150,000 people have fled into the city over the past month after a resumption of Operation 1027 by the Three Brotherhood Alliance in northern Shan State and parts of Mandalay Region.
Despite overwhelming victories and control over the majority of the country, the 20-odd EAOs, along with the PDFs and the shadow National Unity Government (NUG) continue to be ignored.
The Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) has tried to get beyond its five-point peace plan and announced this week that a troika consisting of Laos, Indonesia, and Malaysia would begin negotiations with the junta, at the latest from foreign ministers’ meeting Vientiane – two years after the idea was first mooted.
It’s the type of thinking that looks okay on paper but in reality it speaks more to the abject failure of regional and neighborly influence of organizations including ASEAN and the United Nations.
Barely a word has been heard from the former Australian Foreign Minister Julie Bishop, who was “deeply honored” in April to be named the new U.N. Special Envoy to Myanmar, an inspired choice according to the Lowy Institute.
The Chinese play a deft hand with their brand of diplomacy and need to protect the oil and gas pipelines that stretch north by northeast through Mandalay and across Myanmar.
Beijing deserves credit for at least negotiating with the Three Brotherhood Alliance, which consists of the Arakan Army, the Myanmar National Democratic Alliance Army, and the Ta’ang National Liberation Army, which have proved effective in western Rakhine and northern Shan states.
And Beijing has shown a willingness to talk with other EAOs. The NUG has issued a 10-point China policy aimed at safeguarding Beijing’s interests.
But the NUG and EAO/PDFs will not take part in an election. Combined, they control most of the country anyway and some want Min Aung Hlaing and his generals before an international war crimes tribunal.
The military has also proved itself incapable of carrying out logistics on a scale required for a national vote and any poll will be deservedly derided as rigged. China is also well aware that a bona fide plebiscite is impossible under the current circumstances, yet they keep pushing it.
So what’s the point? To get around these issues, Min Aung Hlaing’s latest promise is to hold his idea of a general election next year with China pressing for polls to be conducted only in areas under military control and with Beijing providing logistics and advisors.
As Igor Blazevic, a human rights advocate and Myanmar specialist noted this raised the prospect that Myanmar would see a “Chinese election.” He told The Irrawaddy that such a poll would allow Beijing to shore up the junta as a viable, if weak, central government.
It’s a process that will also enable the Chinese to cement their footprint across the country and importantly in the states through which its oil and gas interests pass, and that is within its mantra that has gone hand in hand with the Belt and Road Initiative for the past 11 years.