Myanmar’s military-backed Union Solidarity and Development Party won tightly controlled elections, consolidating legislative dominance under Senior General Min Aung Hlaing despite persistently low public support since the 2021 coup. While China pragmatically backs the junta to secure strategic interests such as rare earth supplies and infrastructure access, a potential rapprochement with the United States under Donald Trump could complicate Beijing’s influence.
A voter casts her ballot at a polling station during the third and final phase of Myanmar's general election in Mandalay, Myanmar, on Jan 25, 2026. (Photo: AFP)
The ruling junta (Tatmadaw)-backed Union Solidarity and Development Party (USDP) has emerged victorious in the latest “election” in Myanmar, which lasted over two months. The country’s de facto supreme leader, Senior General Min Aung Hlaing, declared the establishment of a new consultative body that would lend the new government an additional veneer of legitimacy, as well as paving the way for his gradual fading away from the public limelight and administrative duties, without losing his firm grip on overarching power.
With 25% of the parliamentary seats (166 in total) guaranteed for the military, and another 339 out of the 586 “won” by the USDP in the latest elections, broadly junta-aligned elements in the country now control 86% of the legislature.
Support for the heavily nationalist and stability-oriented pledges by the Tatmadaw should not be underestimated amongst segments of the population – including middle-class and upper-middle-class households aligned with junta-controlled or -associated conglomerates, or radical Bamar nationalists who view the army as defenders of their territorial claims against ethnic minority militias.
Yet such supporters are in a distinct minority. The popular approval of the military, per the patchy and incomplete evidence (accurate polls are difficult, after all), remains extremely low throughout vast swathes of the country – especially since the 2021 coup d’etat that toppled the democratically elected National League for Democracy (NLD), helmed by now imprisoned Aung San Suu Kyi. When seen in this light, a cynical yet plausible interpretation of the recently held elections thus comes into the picture: the military is keen to launder its reputation and establish a modicum of international credibility, through an ostensible embrace of democratic procedures.
Unpacking the Historical Complexities of China-Myanmar Relations
Those who are well-versed in China-Myanmar relations would know fully well that the two nations (despite the turnover in states and ruling regimes) have had a long and tendentious relationship. Two invasions during the Yuan and Qing dynasties and the ensuing Sino-Burmese wars had established China’s reputation as an “outside aggressor” in the eyes of the indigenous Bamar majority population in Myanmar, with such historically rooted mistrust amplified by the spillovers of the Chinese Civil War in the 1940s, when large numbers of Nationalist KMT troops retreated into and settled in Northern Myanmar.
Since Myanmar’s independence from the British, its military had harboured clear suspicions towards the Chinese – wary that the country’s northern neighbour would seek to subsume the country into its orbit of influence. In contrast, given the significant potential and prowess of the Chinese economy, as well as the enduring presence and outsized influence of its diaspora in Myanmar (with sensitivities surrounding the Kokang region, of course), the business community in major cities such as Yangon and Mandalay had long been more receptive and open to both investments from and doing business with the Chinese.
It was with such sentiments in view that I penned a piece five years ago, noting that the Chinese state preferred working with Aung San’s broadly popular, largely competent civilian government to the military dictatorship that had usurped power.
Yet Beijing is also fundamentally pragmatic. The China-Myanmar Economic Corridor (CMEC) constitutes a vital component of China’s gameplan to cultivate directs supply chain channels and connectivity infrastructure to the Indian Ocean, bypassing the Strait of Malacca. The substantial number of pipelines, highways, and cross-border talent and trade flows hence connects and ferries Chinese energy to and from the deep-sea port of Kyaukphyu in Rakhine state. More generally, Chinese enterprises eye the vastly untapped terrain of Myanmar with keenness, as potential sites for manufacturing and industrial operations.
Whilst no love is lost between the Chinese and Myanmar leaderships, with its expansive and robust rare earth reserves, Myanmar has come to play a precipitously important role in China’s overarching strategic leverage on the global stage. In the north of the country, rare earth mining and processing operations abound. Indeed, the Kachin State has emerged as a leading source of heavy rare earth elements (HREEs) such as dysprosium and terbium, supplying over two-thirds of the global supply, and over 60% of China’s HREE imports.
Between the seemingly unbridled and insubordinate rebel groups with which Beijing has had limited success in engaging and building working relationships (despite its best efforts) and the intransigent, ossified, but fundamentally predictable Tatmadaw, the latter has emerged as a more seemingly reliable partner – for now. Throw into the mixture an innate wariness towards the perceived alignment by certain rebel groups with Western intelligence agencies and security apparatus, and it is hence no wonder that the Chinese government has increasingly gravitated towards backing the junta over the past two years.
A Subtle yet Steady Opening to the West?
Where their interests diverge, the Chinese are unafraid to make clear to the Tatmadaw that their support is neither unconditional nor to be taken for granted. Beijing’s recent spate of executions of junta-aligned mafia members – comprising those from the infamous Bai and the Ming families, who had long controlled a majority of criminal and scamming operations in the Kokang region bordering China – attested to its resolve in cracking down on transnational crimes, which had posed significant nuisance for Chinese citizens.
Whilst the elections are unlikely to significantly alter the China-Myanmar relationship, they could well yield surprising upshots elsewhere – namely, in generating a pre-text for the Tatmadaw to rekindle long-frayed relations with the American establishment and businesses. To their credit, many of Trump’s close advisors have long viewed the US’ access to a critical stockpile of rare earths as an issue of national security and vital interest. Since Trump’s electoral victory in November 2024, American officials and businesses have sought to deepen contact with both rebel groups fighting the junta in Kachin state, as well as cultivating backchannel ties with the Tatmadaw.
Officials in the Trump administration have denied speculation that they are making covert moves to reach out to junta-linked companies, offering the lifting of sanctions in exchange for access to rare earth mines in regime-controlled areas. Yet the broader signs are clear: under Trump’s more blatantly transactionalist, fundamentally value-less approach to diplomacy, the Tatmadaw senses a pivotal opening – one that would enable it to press for partial normalisation of US-Myanmar relations, even if in a purely de facto, as opposed to de jure, sense.
China’s Myanmar Strategy 2026
How would China respond? Beijing will likely view Naypyidaw with a growing sense of reticence and suspicion, and – with reluctance – as an increasingly confident and assertive interlocutor. The narrative that the regime depended exclusively upon China as a strategic patron had already been challenged by the deepening ties between the junta and Russia, as well as the sale of weapons by North Korea to Myanmar.
This view would likely be met with further challenges as the Trump cabal extends an unconventional olive branch to the junta. If Beijing is to play it smart, it should seek to continually apply pressure on the Tatmadaw to remain committed to pre-existing partnerships and joint ventures, whilst cultivating firmer ties with aligned factions within the rebel camp, as a means of increasing its leverage against Naypyidaw.
It should also convince the opposition that constructive engagement with China can pave the way for a multi-party and enforceable peace process and is likely the only path that can bring both the junta and the disparate opposition groups to the negotiation table. Yet for such convincing efforts to pay off, as with all forms of effective persuasion, would require the demonstration of efficacy: what Beijing giveth, it must also be prepared to taketh away.
