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What’s new? Changing global and regional conditions are giving Myanmar’s military regime greater room for manoeuvre. Growing diplomatic fatigue in Western capitals, China’s moves to prevent regime collapse, shifts in U.S. policy and other geopolitical realignments are hastening normalisation of relations with Naypyitaw’s rulers, despite worsening conflict.
Why does it matter? As geopolitical shifts give neighbouring countries more latitude to engage Naypyitaw, Myanmar’s conflict and humanitarian crisis could face ever greater neglect. Planned elections will lack credibility and may lead to further violence, even as they could encourage some governments to normalise ties with a future military-backed administration.
What should be done? Diplomats should preserve multilateral coordination on Myanmar, above all at the UN Security Council and Association of Southeast Asian Nations, and be ready to seize any opening for a peaceful settlement. They should avoid conferring legitimacy on the regime’s elections, while donors should sustain humanitarian and other vital programming.
I.Overview
Myanmar’s military regime is discovering new diplomatic opportunities as global and regional politics shift. China’s recent moves to prevent the junta’s collapse, diminishing Western interest, chaotic U.S. foreign policy and regional fatigue with a protracted conflict are reshaping the international environment. These trends have led to a gradual thaw in relations between many Asian countries and Naypyitaw, even as the regime continues to lose ground in the post-2021 coup conflict and humanitarian conditions worsen. Elections planned for late in the year will not resolve the political impasse and will likely be violent, but they may offer a convenient pretext for some governments to deepen engagement with the junta. Instead of rushing to recognise the country’s military rulers, foreign powers should preserve what limited space remains for coordinated diplomacy on Myanmar, particularly at the UN Security Council and Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), standing ready to seek a peaceful settlement if the opening arises but not conferring unwarranted legitimacy on the forthcoming polls.
Over four years after the 2021 coup that plunged Myanmar deeper into civil war, the military continues to lose territory to its foes, in particular some of the country’s larger ethnic armed groups. Despite some limited counteroffensives, regime forces remain overstretched and under pressure on several fronts. Meanwhile, humanitarian conditions are deteriorating, compounded by the devastating earthquake that struck the north of the country in March. As the number of civilians requiring humanitarian assistance keeps increasing, international funding is falling far short of needs, especially now that global aid budgets have tightened following U.S. President Donald Trump’s decision to abolish USAID. Some of Myanmar’s most vulnerable populations are receiving little or no assistance, particularly in areas controlled by ethnic armed groups.
Despite adversities on the battlefield and public hardship, the military regime’s prospects appear brighter – in large part because of China’s more assertive role. After a series of successful military offensives by opposition forces, Beijing intervened in August 2024 to stabilise the regime, boosting its diplomatic and military support and restraining some of Naypyitaw’s enemies. Other neighbouring states took China’s backstop as their cue to boost high-level contacts with Naypyitaw on the assumption that it would make the military rulers less likely to fall. Eroding U.S. leadership on democracy and human rights has also helped reduce the political cost for regional powers seeking to normalise ties with the junta. Many now see little to gain from prolonged diplomatic isolation of the regime. They are likely to re-establish normal relations with whatever administration emerges from the elections the junta plans to hold at year’s end.
The planned elections … will not resolve Myanmar’s political crisis or reduce the intensity of the armed conflict.
But the fundamentals remain unchanged. The planned elections, which will not be credible, will not resolve Myanmar’s political crisis or reduce the intensity of the armed conflict. Instead, they are likely to harden political divisions, and they could well trigger new waves of violence as the regime tries to ensure secure conditions for voting while resistance forces fight back. At the same time, Myanmar’s state failure is generating risks that extend beyond the country. These include border instability and migrant and refugee flows, the resurgence of communicable diseases – including HIV, tuberculosis and malaria – and a boom in illicit activities by transnational organised crime syndicates that have established themselves in the country, as well as environmental degradation linked to unchecked natural resource exploitation.
Diplomatic efforts should focus on preserving what space for multilateral coordination on Myanmar remains – particularly at the UN Security Council – and on avoiding steps that would confer undeserved legitimacy on a flawed electoral process. A coordinated approach would enable the Council to respond more decisively to any future deterioration in Myanmar, whether involving violence around the elections or increased regime attacks on civilians, as well as to capitalise on any future opportunities to promote an inclusive political process. China, the country with the most influence in Myanmar, should jettison its go-it-alone approach – which has not helped achieve its objectives of stability and security for its border or investments – and engage more actively with other governments on the Council as well as regional forums. For its part, ASEAN, whose chair rotates annually, should strive for greater policy continuity. Appointing a multi-year envoy could be a useful first step toward more sustained, consistent engagement that can bridge the pre- and post-election periods.
Given the population’s immense needs, donors should also ensure that aid reaches the civilians affected by Asia’s most deadly conflict. To do so, they should look beyond dwindling traditional aid allocations and use innovative approaches to sustain critical programming. Expanding the role of international financial institutions in aid delivery and leveraging their resources, as in other conflict settings, is one avenue to explore. Tapping non-aid budgets – for example, to address transnational crime or better understand the links between Myanmar’s political and conflict dynamics and critical minerals supply chains – is another. At a time of shrinking resources, high-impact, low-cost interventions are essential: funding for community health, education and vernacular media, as well as technical support for non-state governance structures emerging in various parts of the country, can deliver tangible benefits at modest expense. Instead of succumbing to frustration, foreign powers should stand ready to respond to the humanitarian emergency and seize any diplomatic opportunity to prise open Myanmar’s deadlock.
II.A Geopolitical Reordering
More than four years after the coup, the regime is much less diplomatically isolated than even a year ago, when Russia was its only major ally.1 The shift began with Beijing, which moved to bolster the regime in August 2024 in a bid to prevent its disorderly collapse in the face of rebel offensives. China’s pivot – along with widespread diplomatic fatigue with the apparent stalemate in Myanmar – prompted other regional powers to adjust their relations with the military regime, including neighbours India and Thailand, as well as Malaysia in its capacity as rotating chair of ASEAN for 2025.
A.China Plays Its Hand
China had initially declined to back the military regime that seized power in February 2021, viewing the coup as damaging its strategic interests and imperilling its large investments in Myanmar. China was also unhappy with commander-in-chief and coup leader Min Aung Hlaing, whom it viewed as incompetent, harbouring anti-China sentiments and insufficiently cooperative in addressing Beijing’s main concerns – particularly regarding scam centres that were trafficking and defrauding large numbers of Chinese citizens.2
As a result, Beijing permitted the first-ever UN Security Council resolution on Myanmar to pass in December 2023 and did not push for the regime to get a UN ambassador, instead allowing the incumbent – who has sided with the regime’s opponents – to remain in place. China also declined to invite Min Aung Hlaing to Beijing, despite persistent regime lobbying. In addition, Beijing gave its tacit backing to a 2023 rebel offensive in Shan State – the Three Brotherhood Alliance’s Operation 1027 – that routed regime forces and gave the rebels control of vast swathes of territory, including areas that were being used by scam syndicates.3 China was pleased that ethnic armed groups with which it had good relations had taken over areas in Shan State adjacent to the Chinese border, hoping that they would put an end to the scam centres operating there.
Even so, and irritated as Beijing was with Naypyitaw, it had never intended to trigger an existential threat to the regime when it greenlighted Operation 1027. But by mid-2024 – particularly after Lashio, the largest town in northern Shan State, fell in July and, with it, the regional military command – Beijing’s assessment was that the junta could disintegrate in a matter of months.4 Such a disorderly demise was something Beijing wanted to avoid, largely because of the uncertainty over what would come next, and because China sees much of the resistance – particularly the National Unity Government (NUG) – as too close to the West.5
To stave off the regime’s collapse, China threw it a lifeline. It stepped up diplomatic support, sending Foreign Minister Wang Yi to Naypyitaw in August 2024 to meet Min Aung Hlaing for the first time since the coup.6 The junta leader then visited China in November, an invitation he had been pushing for since he seized power – though it was to a regional summit in Kunming rather than a bilateral visit to Beijing, and he did not meet the Chinese president, Xi Jinping.7 That coveted meeting eventually came in Moscow on 9 May 2025, when Xi agreed to speak with Min Aung Hlaing on the sidelines of Russia’s Victory Day celebrations.8
China applied intense pressure on armed groups in northern Myanmar to halt their offensives.
China provided military support to the regime, transferring six fighter jets and other equipment in August 2024.9 In addition, China applied intense pressure on armed groups in northern Myanmar to halt their offensives, securing a January 2025 ceasefire between the regime and the Myanmar National Democratic Alliance Army (MNDAA), an ethnic Kokang armed group which is part of the Three Brotherhood Alliance.10 China is now mediating talks with other armed groups in northern Myanmar.
Beijing’s most striking intervention to date was brokering the MNDAA’s handover of Lashio back to the regime in April 2025. As the capital of northern Shan State and its most important economic hub, Lashio was the biggest prize in the MNDAA’s campaign against regime forces, not least because the group had managed to take control of the military’s regional command centre – the first to fall to opposition forces in Myanmar’s history. Having expended great effort and resources and suffered heavy casualties in the town’s capture, the group was extremely reluctant to give it up.11 The fact that it eventually did so is testament to Beijing’s leverage. The MNDAA also gained substantial benefits from the deal, which confirmed its de facto control of swathes of territory it had gained since late 2023, extending well beyond the borders of the historical Kokang territory up to the Lashio town limits.12 The group is now well placed to punish the regime should it violate the ceasefire, for example by bombing MNDAA-held towns.
Despite losing Lashio, the MNDAA thus emerged from the deal with far firmer control of a large part of northern Shan State. For the regime, it was a humiliating demonstration of both its military weakness and the extent of Beijing’s influence. Probably for that reason, Myanmar state media has made no mention of the ceasefire (it also never acknowledged the loss of the city) and, following the deal, the regime reportedly warned its top brass not to criticise China.13
China went much further than it has in the past to ensure that the deal would stick. Previous ceasefires that it brokered have collapsed, including the January 2024 agreement, which the MNDAA and other members of the Three Brotherhood Alliance broke when they launched phase two of Operation 1027 in June that year. There were also indications that the MNDAA hoped it might be able to stall implementation of the current deal: in the weeks leading up to the deadline for the transfer of Lashio, the group was still expanding its administrative apparatus in the town, including by establishing taxation schemes.14
To oversee the handover and make sure it succeeded, Beijing dispatched a high-level civilian “observer team”, headed by Chinese special envoy for Myanmar Deng Xijun. The presence of the Chinese team, which was in Lashio only briefly, helped underwrite a fraught and logistically complex transfer of authority. The delegation had to travel overland through contested territory, demonstrating Beijing’s leverage over the different parties, as well as the importance of the ceasefire to the Chinese authorities and the great embarrassment that a breakdown might cause.15
China’s more interventionist posture, meanwhile, has pushed it further into Myanmar’s crisis, and its involvement is likely to deepen. A key immediate goal is to reopen Myanmar-China border trade via the main Mandalay-Lashio-Muse highway, important for Myanmar’s economy and equally so for the economy of neighbouring parts of China.16 Only a small fraction of the route remains under regime control (see the map below). The rest is held by the MNDAA, the Ta’ang National Liberation Army (TNLA), the Kachin Independence Organisation (KIO) and the Shan State Progress Party (SSPP), all of whom operate fee-collecting checkpoints along the road.17 Of these, only the MNDAA has a ceasefire with the regime.