China’s diplo-terrorism in Myanmar

Tatmadaw war crimes

To subdue the Arakan Army, Myanmar’s military, known as the Tatmadaw, is reportedly using harsh tactics against civilians, aid workers, journalists, and entire villages, including air power, artillery shelling, burning huts, destroying food reserves and denying medical services and internet access. Curfews have been instituted in some villages from 9pm to 5am.  A World Health Organization worker was shot and killed on April 20. Dozens of civilians have been killed, hundreds injured, and hundreds of huts burned in March alone, according to Arakan American Community (AAC) President Oo Thein Maung. He alleges that the Tatmadaw is motivated by racism against minority nationalities in Myanmar.

Military targeting of civilian populations by the Tatmadaw may entail crimes against humanity. “The Myanmar military has caused serious losses of public security, lives, and property, important infrastructures of the public and private sector, buildings, vehicles, equipment and materials,” alleges Oo Thein Maung. “Therefore the Myanmar military is, by definition, a state terrorist organization.” 

If so, China is again complicit in support to state-sponsored terrorism. Since 2013, Myanmar’s military has imported $720 million in weaponry from China, including 17 JF-17 aircraft, two Type-43 Frigates, 12 Chinese Rainbow UAVs, and 76 Type-92 armored vehicles.

Tatmadaw attacks have made as many as 140,000 civilians homeless in Rakhine State, according to Oo Thein Maung. Over 100 war refugee camps “are facing overwhelming shortages of food, shelter, and medicine,” he writes. Humanitarian aid is blocked by the military to the camps, and over 10,000 acres of rice paddy were damaged in 2019 alone. “With more systematic and strategic oppression, people in the State of Arakan [Rakhine] are to face starvation, especially as the monsoon season of late May-October arrives.”

These numbers do not reflect the greater magnitude of Tatmadaw attacks on Myanmar’s Rohingya Muslims. According to a 2018 study, there were an estimated 1.1 million Rohingya who fled across the border to Bangladesh by that same year. “Rohingya people have faced recurring military crackdowns and fled from Myanmar in significant numbers in 1978, 1992, 2012, 2015[,] 2016 and 2017,” according to the study. “In August 2017 the Myanmar army burned approximately 300 Rohingya villages ... 25,000 Rohingya were murdered, 28,000 raped, 43,000 received gunshot wounds, and 116,000 beaten,” they write.

In January, the International Court of Justice (ICJ) at the Hague ordered Myanmar to take immediate preventative measures to stop genocide against the Rohingya.

According to information attributed to Gaganjit Singh, former deputy director-general of India's Defense Intelligence Agency, and one other source, China has built the most recent of three internally-displaced persons (IDP) camps in Rakhine State, capable of housing approximately 25,000 Rohingya and Rakhine families each. The IDP camps are presented as a form of humanitarian assistance but include electrified barbed wire and are more of a concentration camp than an IDP camp. 

Illustrating the geopolitical complexity of the conflict, China is in competition with Israelis, according to information attributed to Singh, to supply artificial intelligence (AI) technology for the camps.

The Tatmadaw has at its disposal helicopter gunships from Russia and truck-mounted multiple rocket launchers from North Korea. Between 2014 and 2018, Myanmar got 61 percent of its arms imports from China, 20 percent from Russia, and 6.5 percent from Belarus.

China’s arms sales to the Arakan Army

Chinese arms shipments to the Arakan Army were first reported on April 22 by Bhaumik in Eastern Link, a publication focused on the connections between east India, Bangladesh, and Myanmar. Myanmar borders both India to the northwest and China to the northeast. The part of India closest to the territory of the Arakan Army is the Seven Sisters, composed of the seven states of Assam, Arunachal Pradesh, Meghalaya, Mizoram, Manipur, Tripura, and Nagaland, plus the new state of Sikkim on the border with China. 

Frequent unarmed clashes occur between the militaries of China and India in Sikkim, Arunachal Pradesh, and in Bhutan’s Doklam region. The last pushing match, which included stone throwing and a fistfight, occurred on May 9 between 150 Indian and Chinese soldiers.

In 1962, a dispute over Arunachal Pradesh turned into a one-month war. Ever since, China has supported rebels in India’s northeast. 

Rebels from the northeast use a corridor through Myanmar to acquire support from China. When 22 militants were extradited to India from Myanmar on May 15, the militant leadership from the top 11 northeast rebel groups were not among them. There is evidence, according to an Indian source, that these rebel leaders are now in Yunnan, China, where they frequently seek medical attention and Chinese support. 

Their cause is independence, which fits neatly into China’s goal to push India farther west. Northeast rebel chief Paresh Barua implied in 2018 that he gets support from China, and asserted that his relations with China are “very cordial”. He stated that China “can do certain things, but they cannot do everything for us.”

The conflict in the Rakhine and Chin states of Myanmar are of particular concern in India’s northeast as the Arakan Army is attacking government forces and Indian companies constructing a port and road through Myanmar that will be a second lifeline to the Seven Sisters. In the northeast, rebels frequently blow up gas pipelines.

According to Bhaumik, the surface-to-air missiles sold to the Arakan Army are China’s F-N6 MANPADS, capable of downing military helicopters and jets, as well as civilian airliners. 

Another Indian expert said that the Arakan Army gets “everything from 7.62 caliber weapons to anti-aircraft guns of Chinese origin, which are easily available from black markets in Chiang Mai, Thailand.” 

A government helicopter shot in February, likely by the Arakan Army, was forced to land. On board was the chief minister of Rakhine and other officials. 

China does not supply weapons for free. The Arakan Army pays China’s front organizations in Southeast Asia for weapons, and Thai arms smugglers front for the Chinese, according to sources. China’s Norinco arms manufacturer uses these front organizations to sell to the Arakan Army, according to Bhaumik’s reporting.

Norinco did not respond to a request for comment. USINDOPACOM, the U.S. military headquarters for Asia, likewise did not respond. 

In addition to China’s supply of funding and weapons, according to a military source, the Arakan Army obtains weapons and drugs from the Kachin and Wa armies. The latter has been described as recently as 2015 as a “narco-army” that obtains weapons, including heavy artillery, surface-to-air missiles, and armored vehicles, from China. Both armies reportedly have their own arms factories that produce Chinese-style weapons. The factories were purchased from China and are manned by Chinese technicians. The support from China has empowered the UWSA to defend a territory and maintain a ceasefire agreement with the Tatmadaw that has held for 31 years.

Training for the Arakan Army’s new MANPADS, according to a military source, was either from the KIA or the Chinese arms company. Sale of the MANPADS to the Arakan Army was “in response to [the] Myanmar Army using helicopters to fight Arakanese,” he wrote. 

According to the source, China has “complete” influence over Kachin State. The think tank expert wrote that “the AA has been incubated by the Chinese using the KIA.”

The April 22 report in Eastern Link buttresses the case for a strong connection between China and the Arakan Army. “The AA is said to have strong links with China since its formation in Kachin in 2009,” writes Bhaumik. “Its spokesman Khaine Tukkha recently said ‘China recognizes us while India does not,’ which explains why AA does not disturb the Chinese deep seaport at Kyaukphyu but kidnaps and badgers Indian construction workers involved in the Kaladan project.”

The Arakan Army did not respond to multiple requests for comment. 

On April 30 the Arakan Army did, however, deny allegations made by the Myanmar military that it produces and traffics enough methamphetamine with the Kachin-based Kaungkha militia to support itself financially. Tellingly, they remained silent on the April 22 report of a Chinese arms shipment.

China’s ‘forward defense’ against India through the UWSA and Arakan Army

The biggest of China’s ethnic rebel groups is the UWSA, under which the Arakan Army serves in a coalition. China supports the UWSA, and in turn, the UWSA provides arms and ammunition to a large number of the ethnic rebel groups throughout Myanmar. Perhaps as a result of the influence that these Chinese arms produce, the UWSA leads an umbrella group for about 80 percent of the country’s ethnic rebels. 

Called the Federal Political Negotiation and Consultative Committee (FPNCC), the group includes the KIA, the Myanmar National Democratic Alliance Army, the TNLA, the Arakan Army, the National Democratic Alliance Army, and the Shan State Army. 

Of these groups, the Arakan Army is the fastest growing. “In 10 years — they grew to 8,000 people,” said Bhaumik. “The KIA took 40 years to reach 8,000.” 

The KIA gets less support from China because it is Christian, and the CCP does not trust Christians, according to information attributed to John Mukherjee, former chief of staff of India's Eastern Army. 

Neither does the CCP give significant support to the Muslim Rohingya’s small group of ARSA militants, according to the Australian academic. 

China has not only armed the UWSA, but provided it with a safe haven and rear area for tactical retreat. The UWSA is not in direct conflict with the Tatamadaw currently, according to Lintner, but it is using a strategy of “forward defense” that involves arming other ethnic groups in Myanmar and thereby expanding its influence and tying down Myanmar’s military. 

The UWSA grew from and holds most of the 20,000 square-km territory in Shan State previously controlled by the once-powerful Communist Party of Burma (CPB). Since the 1960s, China supported first the CPB, and then the UWSA, including through volunteer fighters and workers from China, political education in China, and Chinese military and engineering advisors.

The UWSA’s finances are controlled by ethnic Chinese businessmen. One of those businessmen, Wei Xuegang, “has massive investments in jade mines in Kachin State and other business ventures throughout the country,” according to Lintner. “In that capacity, he is close to many senior Myanmar military officers.”

Most Wa speak Chinese, use Chinese currency, and communicate over Chinese cell phone networks. Within its territory live approximately 600,000 people, including approximately 100,000 Chinese and other migrants. It has as many as 30,000 troops, 20,000 auxiliaries, and 2,500 police officers. The UWSA is equipped with Chinese armored vehicles, heavy artillery, and surface-to-air missiles. The army’s political arm includes a single political party and organization led by a nine-member standing committee of the politburo over a party membership of 10,000 individuals.