President Xi Jinping meets Myanmar’s Acting President Min Aung Hlaing at the Tianjin Guest House, August 30, 2025. Source: Ministry of Foreign Affairs, People’s Republic of China.
November 2, 2025
By Scott N. Romaniuk, Khandakar Tahmid Rejwan and László Csicsmann
Beijing’s Quiet War Management
Since late 2023, Beijing has shifted from passive bystander to active broker in Myanmar’s sprawling civil war—trading silence on human rights for silence along its border. Through a series of discreet negotiations in Kunming and Yunnan’s border towns, China has engineered local ceasefires between the Myanmar military (Tatmadaw) and ethnic armed organisations (EAOs) such as the Ta’ang National Liberation Army (TNLA) and its allies.
These arrangements—including the January 2024 truce in northern Shan State and renewed understandings reached by October 2025—have calmed the gunfire but not the grievances.
Behind the veneer of mediation lies a policy of containment rather than reconciliation. China’s ‘ceasefire diplomacy’ seeks to stabilise the frontier, safeguard trade corridors, and protect strategic assets—from oil pipelines to the Kyaukphyu port—while keeping Myanmar within its sphere of influence. Each truce buys temporary calm and commercial continuity, yet leaves the deeper political crisis untouched.
In practice, Beijing acts less as a peacekeeper than as a conflict manager—a power that freezes wars it has no intention of ending. What emerges is a fragile equilibrium: a managed quiet that serves China’s strategic and economic interests while deepening Myanmar’s internal fractures. The illusion of calm masks a deeper disorder—a ‘frozen war’ sustained by Beijing’s preference for stability without reform, peace without justice, and dialogue without inclusion.
Beijing’s Strategic Objectives
China’s engagement in Myanmar follows a pragmatic approach shaped by geography and security rather than ideology. Its primary goals are threefold:Border stability. Cross-border fighting, refugee flows, and smuggling threaten to spill into Yunnan, disrupting local economies and complicating China’s internal security management. Beijing’s mediation aims to contain these pressures within Myanmar, preventing them from destabilising its southwestern provinces. By brokering localised truces and maintaining communication channels with EAOs, China reduces the immediate risk of armed clashes crossing the border, secures key transit points, and manages humanitarian fallout—all while projecting an image of responsible regional stewardship.
Protection of economic interests. Major Chinese projects—including oil and gas pipelines, mining concessions, and the deep-sea port at Kyaukphyu—depend on predictable security conditions to function effectively and generate returns. Northern and eastern Myanmar also host significant deposits of rare earth elements (REEs), gemstones, and other strategic minerals essential to China’s high-tech and defense sectors. Stability along the border enables Beijing to secure continued access to these resources while shielding mining operations from conflict-related disruption or international scrutiny. By ensuring the safe movement of goods, the integrity of energy corridors, and the uninterrupted operation of strategic extractive projects, China positions itself to protect both immediate commercial gains and long-term industrial priorities. Each truce buys temporary calm and commercial continuity, yet leaves the deeper political crisis untouched.
Regional influence. By positioning itself as the indispensable mediator, Beijing ensures that no Western or ASEAN-led initiative can proceed without its involvement, effectively shaping the regional order to its advantage. Its unique combination of economic leverage, historical ties, and access to local actors allows China to dictate the terms of engagement and assert soft power across Myanmar’s borderlands. Beyond immediate conflict management, this influence reinforces China’s strategic narrative: that stability, trade, and development in Southeast Asia are best maintained under Beijing’s watchful eye. Such dominance strengthens China’s diplomatic position with neighboring states, deters external interference, and embeds its presence within regional decision-making processes—extending the logic of containment from the battlefield into the broader geopolitical arena.
This ‘stability-first’ approach has long defined Chinese policy toward Myanmar, but recent escalation in the north compelled Beijing to play a more visible diplomatic role. When the Three Brotherhood Alliance (3BHA) launched Operation 1027 in late 2023—seizing strategic towns and border gates—Chinese trade and logistics networks were disrupted. Beijing’s immediate priority became crisis management, not democratisation or federal reform.
Anatomy of China-Brokered Ceasefires
The ceasefires emerging from China’s mediation share several recurring features. They are geographically limited, applying only to specific border corridors, transport routes, or economic zones rather than establishing nationwide truces. Their scope reflects Beijing’s preference for local containment over a holistic political process.
Most agreements involve tactical concessions: halting offensives, partial withdrawals from contested areas, or reopening key trade checkpoints. These commitments are narrowly practical—aimed at restoring commerce and quiet along the frontier—while avoiding discussion of Myanmar’s constitutional structure or political legitimacy.
Equally striking is the weakness of enforcement mechanisms. The agreements rely on ad hoc communication channels or bilateral monitoring committees, without third-party verification or credible sanctions for violations. China assumes that economic incentives—such as the resumption of border trade or promises of development assistance—will sustain compliance.
This blend of transactional diplomacy and selective engagement underscores Beijing’s belief that prosperity and stability are mutually reinforcing, even in the absence of genuine reconciliation.
The January 2024 truce in northern Shan State exemplified this approach. It halted major offensives near Muse and Lashio and reopened freight routes, easing pressure on China’s cross-border economy. By October 2025, the Kunming agreement with the TNLA went further, providing for limited withdrawals from key townships and a mutual commitment to avoid airstrikes. Yet none of these arrangements addressed the underlying political questions of federalism, representation, or the junta’s future—issues that continue to drive the country’s fragmentation.
China’s Leverage—and Its Limits
China’s ability to bring warring actors to the table stems from its longstanding relationships with armed groups along the border. Many EAOs maintain offices and logistical hubs in Yunnan, depend on trade through Chinese territory, and rely on Chinese intermediaries to communicate with the junta. This grants Beijing significant convening power and economic leverage—but not decisive authority.
Several factors constrain China’s capacity to enforce peace. The conflict remains highly fragmented, involving more than a dozen major EAOs and numerous militias, each pursuing localised agendas. A ceasefire with one coalition rarely influences others operating elsewhere. Moreover, many resistance actors view Beijing’s mediation as self-serving—an effort to safeguard the China–Myanmar Economic Corridor (CMEC) rather than advance political reform.
Beijing’s aversion to direct intervention further limits its leverage. Unlike Western-led peacekeeping or UN-monitored ceasefires, China avoids deploying personnel or creating formal verification structures. Its role is confined to diplomatic pressure, trade facilitation, and occasional closure of border crossings to signal disapproval. The result is a pattern of episodic mediation—powerful enough to broker temporary pauses in fighting, yet too cautious to impose or sustain a comprehensive settlement.
Beijing thus acts as an arbiter of convenience: influential, indispensable, but unwilling to risk deeper entanglement.
Political and Humanitarian Consequences
China’s ceasefire diplomacy has produced a paradoxical blend of relief and stagnation. On one level, temporary truces in northern Shan State have clearly reduced violence, enabling displaced civilians to return and trade to resume. For border communities, the reopening of transport routes has brought tangible economic benefits and limited humanitarian respite.
Yet these gains are fragile and selective. By freezing front lines, China’s initiatives often consolidate the junta’s control over key territories, providing the Tatmadaw with breathing space rather than accountability. EAOs may use the lull to regroup, but the absence of political concessions leaves their grievances unresolved.
Without robust monitoring, violations—particularly airstrikes and artillery attacks—resume with little consequence. Civilians continue to bear the brunt of uncertainty. Humanitarian access remains tightly restricted, and China’s ceasefire agreements rarely include provisions for aid delivery or civilian protection.
Politically, Beijing’s insistence on dealing solely with “the existing authorities” reinforces the junta’s legitimacy while marginalising the National Unity Government (NUG) and allied resistance movements. This selective diplomacy delivers what might be termed stability without accountability: a frozen conflict that benefits state and corporate interests while excluding the voices of Myanmar’s broader society.
India: A Strategic Balancing Act
For India, China’s assertive diplomacy in Myanmar presents both a challenge and an opportunity. Myanmar is a cornerstone of India’s ‘Act East’ strategy, serving as the land bridge connecting South and Southeast Asia. Major initiatives such as the Kaladan Multi-Modal Transit Transport Corridor and the India–Myanmar–Thailand Trilateral Highway depend on predictable security conditions along the western frontier.
However, Beijing’s predominance in ceasefire mediation complicates New Delhi’s strategic calculus. Persistent instability in Chin and Sagaing States has disrupted several flagship Indian connectivity and development initiatives—including the Kaladan Multimodal Transit Transport Project (KMTTP), the India-Myanmar-Thailand (IMT) Trilateral Highway, and projects under the India–Myanmar Border Area Development Programme (BADP), which aim to enhance cross-border infrastructure through roads, schools, and health facilities.
Simultaneously, China’s expanding influence in northern Myanmar risks further marginalising India’s regional footprint. The continuing influx of refugees into Mizoram and Manipur also imposes administrative burdens and exacerbates ethnic sensitivities within India’s border states.
Faced with these pressures, India must pursue a delicate balancing act: maintaining functional ties with the junta to protect its infrastructure projects while quietly coordinating with ASEAN, Japan, and Western partners to hedge against China’s expanding sway. Myanmar has effectively become another front in the broader strategic contest between India and China for influence across the Indo-Pacific.
Bangladesh: Between Refugees and Realpolitik
Bangladesh continues to shoulder the humanitarian consequences of Myanmar’s instability, most visibly through the protracted Rohingya crisis. Nearly one million refugees remain confined to camps in Cox’s Bazar, and sporadic violence across the border perpetuates insecurity.
While China has occasionally served as an intermediary in repatriation discussions, its overriding goal has been to shield Myanmar’s junta from Western censure rather than to address the structural causes of displacement. Should China’s mediation succeed in calming Rakhine State, Dhaka could benefit from reduced border tensions and modest trade gains along the Bay of Bengal.
Significantly, the recent rise of the Arakan Army, which now controls most of the Myanmar side of the border and roughly 90 percent of Rakhine State, has complicated any prospect of a unilateral solution imposed by the junta under Chinese pressure. Although Beijing maintains considerable influence over the Arakan Army, any meaningful progress remains contingent on China’s willingness to support Rohingya repatriation—something it has thus far avoided.
A conflict-ridden Myanmar increasingly dependent on Beijing leaves Bangladesh with shrinking diplomatic space to manoeuvre. Without genuine political progress inside Myanmar, repatriation efforts will remain stalled, and the protracted refugee crisis will continue to strain Bangladesh’s social cohesion and security.
Thailand: Quiet Endorsement, Lingering Risks
Thailand’s proximity to Myanmar makes it an immediate stakeholder in any reduction of violence. Sharing a long and porous border across the Karen and Karenni regions, Bangkok has discreetly welcomed China’s limited success in calming the north. The easing of hostilities stabilises cross-border trade and reduces the risk of sudden refugee surges.
Nonetheless, this relief is tempered by unease over Beijing’s growing dominance in regional crisis management. China’s monopolisation of ceasefire diplomacy has marginalised both Thailand’s own influence and ASEAN’s collective role. Continued instability in southeastern Myanmar, meanwhile, threatens to displace populations southward, imposing fresh humanitarian and administrative burdens on Thai provinces.
Thailand’s strategy has therefore been one of utilitarian restraint. It tacitly supports China’s stabilisation efforts while maintaining autonomy in border management and humanitarian policy. Bangkok’s balancing act typifies Southeast Asia’s broader approach: cautious acceptance of Chinese leadership coupled with discreet hedging to avoid overdependence.
The U.S.: Watching, Waiting, and Widening Its Footprint
While China dominates conflict diplomacy, the U.S. has re-entered Myanmar’s periphery as part of its broader Indo-Pacific recalibration. For much of the post-coup period, Washington confined itself to sanctions and rhetorical support for the exiled National Unity Government But as of mid-2025, signs of a deeper, quieter engagement have emerged.
A massive new U.S. consulate complex in Chiang Mai, northern Thailand, is nearing completion—an intelligence and coordination hub intended to monitor northern Myanmar and southwestern China. Once operational, it will enhance Washington’s ability to liaise with resistance networks, regional partners, and humanitarian missions. At the same time, Washington has encouraged Bangkok to assume a more active diplomatic role, despite Thailand’s reluctance to challenge Beijing directly.
Washington and Beijing: A New Cold Front in Myanmar
Myanmar has thus become a testing ground for U.S.–China rivalry in miniature. Beijing seeks to contain conflict and secure its assets; Washington seeks to prevent Beijing from monopolising outcomes in Myanmar. China freezes the war; the U.S. probes the freeze.
Strategically, Washington’s focus on Rakhine State and the Bay of Bengal makes sense. A friendly or semi-autonomous zone along Myanmar’s western flank could disrupt China’s Yunnan-to-Kyaukphyu corridor—its critical ‘Malacca bypass’. There has been speculation that the U.S. has discussed contingencies such as limited air-denial operations or humanitarian ‘no-fly zones’ in the event of rising civilian casualties. Even if unrealised, these deliberations reveal how Myanmar now figures within the architecture of the U.S. Indo-Pacific strategy, alongside the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue (Quad) and the trilateral security partnership between Australia, the UK, and the U.S. (AUKUS).
Yet Washington’s leverage remains constrained. Distance, limited economic exposure, and China’s entrenched regional networks all curb U.S. influence. Beijing’s proximity and financial reach allow it to shape outcomes directly, while Washington must rely on intermediaries—Thailand, India, Bangladesh—and covert intelligence sharing. Its approach is one of managed disruption, designed to complicate Beijing’s dominance without inviting direct confrontation.
For the rest of the region, this sharpening U.S.–China rivalry over Myanmar compounds the dilemma of how to engage Beijing’s ceasefire diplomacy without deepening dependency.
Implications for Regional Actors
China’s role in Myanmar presents regional and external actors with a difficult dilemma: how to engage with Beijing’s ceasefire diplomacy without reinforcing Myanmar’s authoritarian stagnation. For ASEAN, Japan, India, and Western governments, the challenge lies in recognising the short-term benefits of reduced violence while addressing the long-term risks of political ossification.
Comprehensive condemnation of China’s involvement is neither realistic nor productive, given Beijing’s unparalleled access to all sides of the conflict. Yet uncritical acceptance risks entrenching a peace process that excludes key stakeholders and normalises a fragmented, militarised order.
A more constructive path would involve complementary diplomacy—working alongside China’s stabilisation initiatives but insisting upon inclusivity, transparency, and independent monitoring. In this sense, Myanmar could serve as a testing ground for regional burden-sharing: combining China’s local leverage with ASEAN’s normative frameworks and the developmental capacities of other partners.
Cold Peace at China’s Doorstep: Beijing’s Managed War and Washington’s Return to Myanmar
Beijing’s mediation in Myanmar has bought quiet, not peace. Each China-brokered ceasefire lowers the volume of gunfire along the Yunnan frontier but raises the cost of genuine political resolution. What appears as diplomacy is, in truth, border management by other means — a calculated effort to keep the conflict just stable enough for trade to flow and investments to remain secure.
The result is a cold peace: a landscape of truces without trust, settlements without justice, and borders secured at the expense of those trapped behind them. For China, this is success — a conflict frozen in place, predictable and profitable. For Myanmar, it is paralysis. The country remains carved into zones of uneasy calm and hidden violence, where local deals replace national reconciliation and sovereignty bends towards Beijing’s convenience.
Yet the freeze is no longer China’s alone to manage. Washington’s quiet re-entry — through its Chiang Mai hub, expanding co-operation with Thailand and Bangladesh, and growing attention to the Bay of Bengal — signals a new layer of strategic contestation. Where Beijing practises managed stability, Washington experiments with managed disruption. The U.S. does not seek to unfreeze Myanmar’s war so much as to prevent China from controlling its thaw.
The paradox of China’s engagement thus widens into a regional one. Two powers now compete to define what ‘stability’ means in Myanmar — one through containment, the other through complication. The outcome may be less a resolution than a duopoly of influence, where the war remains suspended between rival imperatives rather than ended through shared purpose.
By prioritising border security and economic continuity over governance and justice, Beijing has stabilised the symptoms of Myanmar’s crisis while leaving the disease untouched. Its model of selective engagement secures China’s interests but entrenches Myanmar’s political stalemate. For Washington, contesting this model may offer leverage, but it also risks deepening the militarisation of diplomacy in a country already saturated with conflict.
Regional actors face a difficult choice. Engaging with China’s ceasefire diplomacy may ease humanitarian suffering and open limited space for dialogue, yet uncritical co-operation risks legitimising an order built on coercion and exclusion. The added presence of the U.S. may diversify diplomatic options, but it also internationalises Myanmar’s deadlock, turning the country into yet another frontier of strategic friction.
China’s strategy appears to have worked — but only on its own terms. It has silenced the guns, not the grievances; stabilised the border, not the nation. The war has not ended — it has merely been placed on ice, waiting for the next thaw.
About the authors
:Scott N. Romaniuk: Senior Research Fellow, Centre for Contemporary Asia Studies, Corvinus Institute for Advanced Studies (CIAS), Corvinus University of Budapest, Hungary.
Khandakar Tahmid Rejwan: Research Data Analyst, Bangladesh Peace Observatory, Centre for Alternatives (CA), Dhaka, Bangladesh.
László Csicsmann: Full Professor and Head of the Centre for Contemporary Asia Studies, Corvinus Institute for Advanced Studies (CIAS), Corvinus University of Budapest, Hungary; Senior Research Fellow, Hungarian Institute of International Affairs (HIIA).
