General Min Aung Hlaing, Burmese military leader, accompanied by a small delegation of soldiers for his trip to China, at Naypyidaw airport, Burma, November 5, 2024. The photo is provided by the information service of the Burmese junta. AP Host country of the eighth Greater Mekong summit, an aid program launched in 1992 by the Asian Development Bank, China chose this pretext to invite General Min Aung Hlaing, head of the Burmese military junta and author of the coup State of February 2021. This is a first: even if the People’s Republic endorsed the putsch, Beijing had until now snubbed the Burmese number one and paused all its investment projects. General Min Aung Hlaing, who will meet Chinese Prime Minister Li Qiang, will also rub shoulders with the heads of government of Laos, Thailand and Cambodia – who have nevertheless refused to see him since 2021 within the framework of meetings of the Association of Nations of Southeast Asia (Asean). After Kunming, capital of Yunnan province, where the Grand Mekong summit is being organized, the Generalissimo will travel to Chongqing and Shenzhen. Very close to Russia, where he has traveled twice, General Min maintains a difficult relationship with his Chinese neighbor. This one was paradoxically closer to the former head of the Burmese government Aung San Suu Kyi, ex-dissident and icon of the fight for democracy… The Chinese special envoy Deng Xijun tried several times, in vain, to gain access to Aung San Suu Kyi, imprisoned since the coup d’état, but without success: the Burmese regime refused any access to the former leader. For his part, in October 2023, General Min had gone out of his way to be invited to the “Silk Roads” summit in Beijing: the Burmese economy is bloodless, and he then strives to revive the projects Chinese on favorable grounds for Beijing. “Change of footing” from Beijing Not only did the invitation not arrive, but the surprise offensive of a coalition of ethnic armed groups opposed to the junta on the Chinese border, on October 27, 2023, overturned the table on Burmese conflict: the regime’s army experiences its most crushing defeat. The Chinese position is immediately perceived as ambiguous, to the point that ultranationalist voices within the junta see the hand of Beijing behind the advances of these guerrillas who have depended for decades on its favors. Didn’t China take advantage of the rebels’ victory to “clean up” the cyberfraud centers on the Burmese border which had proliferated under the control of the junta? Read also: Article reserved for our subscribers In Burma, the junta is under increasing pressure from multiple attacks by guerrillas Read later Beijing then played negotiator by organizing ceasefire talks in Kunming between the Burmese junta and the two The main ethnic armed groups on the offensive, the Myanmar National Democratic Alliance Army (MNDAA) and the Ta’ang National Liberation Army (TNLA), both in its northern sphere of influence Shan State. You have 64.66% of this article left to read. The rest is reserved for subscribers.
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