By AFP
December 22, 2025
A woman cycles past campaign billboards ahead of Myanmar's general election in Pyin Oo Lwin in Myanmar's Mandalay Region - Copyright AFP Sai Aung MAIN
Myanmar’s military-run elections are being pilloried abroad and shunned at home, but neighbouring China has emerged as an enthusiastic backer of the pariah poll.
International monitors have dismissed the vote starting Sunday as a charade to rebrand Myanmar’s military rule since a 2021 coup, which triggered a civil war.
But Beijing’s brokerage has secured watershed truces and retreats by rebel groups — turning the tide of the conflict and strengthening the junta’s hand ahead of the weeks-long vote.
Once backing opposition factions, analysts say China now throws its weight behind the military and its polls as Beijing pursues its own private interests in Myanmar — and even the reordering of its leadership.
“It’s as if an outsider were involved in our family issues,” complained a resident of northern Lashio city, once the rebels’ biggest war prize but returned to the junta via Beijing’s intervention in April.
“I want to sort out my family matters by ourselves,” said the 30-year-old woman, declining to be named for security reasons. “I don’t like other people involved.”
– ‘No state collapse’ –
Myanmar’s military cancelled democracy nearly five years ago, detaining civilian leader Aung San Suu Kyi and alleging her electoral victory was secured by massive voter fraud.
The country plunged into civil war as pro-democracy activists took up arms as rag-tag guerrillas, fighting alongside formidable ethnic minority armies that have long resisted central rule.
China’s reaction to the military takeover was initially muted, but the explosion of internet scam centres along the China-Myanmar border threw a lever.
The massively profitable online fraud factories ensnared legions of Chinese citizens — both as trafficked, unwilling workers and as targets in elaborate romance and business cryptocurrency cons.
Irked by the junta’s failure to crack down, Beijing abandoned its agnosticism, giving at least its tacit backing to a combined rebel offensive, monitors say.
The “Three Brotherhood Alliance” trio of ethnic minority armies won stunning advances, including Lashio in the summer of 2024 — the first capture of a state capital and a regional military command.
“What I’ve seen is that China can control outside organisations,” said another 30-year-old Lashio resident, also speaking anonymously for security reasons.
The rebels marched on to the brink of Myanmar’s second city, Mandalay, before Beijing pumped the brakes, said Morgan Michaels, a research fellow at the International Institute for Strategic Studies think tank.
“Beijing’s policy is no state collapse,” he told AFP. “When it looked like the military was going to collapse, it equated that with state collapse and so it stepped in to prevent that.”
– Reshuffling ranks –
China may have settled on backing the military, but Michaels says there are terminal doubts about military chief Min Aung Hlaing, who plunged the country into an intractable crisis.
“I think there’s a general sense that he’s stubborn, not particularly good at what he does,” said Michaels. “They would like to see him moved aside or at least have his power diluted.”
Many monitors, including United Nations expert Tom Andrews, have described the election as a “sham”.
Rebels defying military rule have pledged to block the vote from their territory — deriding it as choreography allowing Min Aung Hlaing to prolong his rule by wearing a civilian sash.
But the nominal return to civilian rule will hedge Min Aung Hlaing’s power, said Michaels, forcing him to choose between the presidency or armed forces chief — roles he has held in tandem under military rule.
“It probably will result in his power being diluted or him having to make some sort of compromise,” said the analyst.
After the junta started to lay out an election timetable, Min Aung Hlaing enjoyed his first post-coup meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping in May.
Meanwhile, China began to defuse the “Three Brotherhood Alliance” — peeling away two of its factions based along its border with truces.
The Ta’ang National Liberation Army agreed to an armistice in October, after the Myanmar National Democratic Alliance Army handed back once bitterly contested Lashio in April.
“I feel lost as a citizen,” said the Lashio woman who requested anonymity.
“Some of my friends cannot come back. Some have already died. They are not in the world anymore.”
A Chinese foreign ministry spokesman told AFP: “China supports Myanmar in broadly uniting domestic political forces, steadily advancing its domestic political agenda and restoring stability and development.”
Lashing back at foreign criticism of the poll last week, junta spokesman Zaw Min Tun told reporters: “It is not being held for the international community.”
But he said that “partner countries” are “assisting and supporting the election” — doing so “out of a desire for the betterment of Myanmar”.
Myanmar’s long march of military rule
By AFP
December 22, 2025
Myanmar's military chief Min Aung Hlaing (C) in Naypyidaw on March 28, 2025, after an earthquake in central Myanmar - Copyright AFP Sai Aung MAIN
Myanmar’s military has ruled the country for most of its post-independence history, presenting itself as the only force capable of guarding the fractious Southeast Asian nation from rupture and ruin.
A decade-long democratic thaw saw martial rulers loosen their grip and Nobel Peace Prize laureate Aung San Suu Kyi lead, before a junta snatched back power in a 2021 coup triggering a ferocious civil war.
The military has organised elections starting Sunday but the vote is being shunned at home and abroad, and the generals have pledged to preserve their role in politics.
Here is a brief history of military rule in Myanmar:
– Founding force –
Myanmar, formerly known as Burma, won its independence in 1948 as Britain dissolved its empire after World War II.
The autonomy struggle was led by Aung San, the father of Aung San Suu Kyi. He first fought with the invading Japanese to oust Britain, before swapping sides as the tide of war changed and currying favour with London for the cause of independence.
The fledgling democracy had a thriving press and cinema scene, and promising economic potential as the world’s leading rice exporter.
But as the civilian government battled rebellions and internal divisions, it handed power to the military in 1958 for a two-year caretaker spell.
– ‘Bamboo curtain’ –
Elections followed, but the voluntary relinquishing of power had emboldened the military to make a takeover by force in 1962.
Aung San’s wartime comrade Ne Win, who had taken the helm of the armed forces after the leader’s assassination in murky circumstances, swooped in in a putsch he justified as protection against Myanmar’s disintegration.
He later said the military “took over power against its cherished beliefs”, promising to “transfer power to the people in due course”.
But he ruled for 26 years, enforcing a nominally socialist one-party state that pulled a “bamboo curtain” around Myanmar making it a hermit nation, crashing the economy and crushing dissent.
– Protests, coup, protests –
Massive student-led pro-democracy protests that began on August 8, 1988 forced Ne Win to step down.
But a rebranded leadership swiftly staged a fresh coup, crushing demonstrations in a bloody crackdown that saw more than 3,000 people killed and many more spirited away to prison.
Than Shwe became the top general, facing his own uprising in 2007 when the “Saffron Revolution” led by robed monks took up the pro-democracy mantle.
He, too, used military might to quell the resistance.
The 1988 protests were a proving ground for activists, some still challenging military rule today. At the forefront was Suu Kyi, who won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1991 during one of many stints in detention.
– Military makes the rules –
Than Shwe retired in 2011, handing power to a civilian government, which was however led by an ex-general and reined in by a military-drafted constitution privileging the armed forces with a central role in parliament and cabinet.
Critics initially dismissed it as military rule wearing a civilian sash, but president Thein Sein proved a cautious reformist.
He released Suu Kyi, who surged to electoral victory in 2015 and assumed a leadership position carved out to sidestep military-drafted rules that barred her from the presidency.
The democratic figurehead opened the country up, often sparring with military chief Min Aung Hlaing.
– Civil war –
Her second landslide in 2020 polls proved a step too far, and Min Aung Hlaing snatched back power, making unsubstantiated allegations of voter fraud, re-jailing Suu Kyi and dissolving her party.
The coup triggered a full-blown civil war as long-active ethnic minority armies were joined on the battlefield by pro-democracy partisans.
The junta is touting the upcoming phased elections as a step towards reconciliation.
But Suu Kyi remains under junta lock and key, generals are managing the vote, rebels are set to block it from territory they control, and international monitors have dismissed it as a pretext for continuing military rule.
Results are expected around the end of January 2026.
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