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Military intervention by China in Myanmar’s civil war is more likely than generally thought. While attention is fixed on Beijing’s expansionist activities in the South China Sea and aggressive intentions towards Taiwan, China’s more immediately consequential move in Southeast Asia could come via an overland vector.

Speculation that China may step up its involvement in Myanmar’s civil war has been brewing for some time. However, discussion has been mostly limited to Myanmar watchers, receiving little mainstream attention in comparison with Beijing’s well-publicisedbehaviour in the South China Sea.

According to media reporting, China recently proposed establishing a ‘joint security company’ with Myanmar. While there is no agreement on what this will consist of and how it will be established, the presence of armed Chinese personnel operating within Myanmar’s territory would shorten the odds on Beijing’s direct intervention in the civil war, with a high risk of mission creep.

Beijing has various motivations to step up its security role in Myanmar. Protecting China’s investments under the China-Myanmar Economic Corridor is one obvious interest. The apparent trigger for China’s proposal was the bombing of its Mandalay consulate on 18 October. The threat to Chinese assets and personnel has intensified over the past year as Naypyidaw’s military capacity has declined, to the point that its ability to maintain basic security is no longer assured.

Elsewhere, Beijing has relied on private military companies to maintain security for Belt and Road projects. However, Myanmar’s civil war has escalated to the point of threatening the junta’s hold on power. China’s interests in Myanmar are deep and complex, given the porosity of a long border and Beijing’s record of support for both regime and non-regime forces. Beijing still has many levers to influence the warring parties in Myanmar short of direct military intervention. But its overriding interest now is to prevent a rebel takeover that could imperil its investments across the country. Beijing has invested heavily because Myanmar offers access to the Indian Ocean across the shortest distance from China’s borders, including for energy supplies. Pakistan’s largely inactive Gwadar port is not a serious alternative.

Much hinges on such details of the proposed joint entity as command arrangements, its rules of engagement and whether it includes personnel from the Chinese armed forces or paramilitary. Would it operate only in the border region, or wherever Chinese assets are located? Would its remit be tied to the static protection of Chinese-owned assets, or allow Chinese forces to undertake hot pursuit against anti-regime forces? Notwithstanding these uncertainties, the creation of a joint security company with the junta would basically recast Beijing in the role of Naypyidaw’s security patron.

Beijing is unlikely to lightly contemplate direct intervention in Myanmar’s civil war and could ultimately stop short of that. Engaging in military operations against anti-regime insurgents would attract international criticism. At some level, China must be aware of the risk that an open-ended security commitment to a weakened regime could draw it into a quagmire.

While border security, asset protection and preventing regime collapse are the obvious ‘defensive’ motivations for China to intervene in Myanmar, potentially there is a more offensive driver in play: practice and precedent for the People’s Liberation Army.

For many years, the conventional wisdom has been that China is reluctant to use armed force beyond its borders. The PLA has not engaged in major combat operations since the 1979 cross-border conflict with Vietnam, which resulted in tactical defeat. Even the all-out PLA combat commitment during the Korean War was officially described as a volunteer force. But history may be a poor guide to the future in this respect.

The PLA has moved on by leaps and bounds, testing its modernised war-fighting capabilities in large and increasingly complex exercises, including within Taiwan’s environs. Yet there is still no substitute for combat experience, of which the PLA has so little, to test basic morale and fighting effectiveness. China’s senior military leaders could view Myanmar as a potential crucible for learning, in the same way that Russia approached the Syrian civil war last decade. Special forces operations, joint operations and command and control would have some transferability to Taiwan scenarios. The fact that Russia and North Korea are jointly honing their combat skills in Ukraine, while the PLA remains untested, will not be lost on Xi Jinping, who heads the Central Military Commission.

Xi must also weigh the international consequences of intervention. The election of Donald Trump is favourable to Beijing in this respect, as he is likely to see Myanmar as falling squarely within China’s sphere of influence. India does not want an enhanced Chinese security presence in Myanmar, but it could do little to stop it, and Delhi is more concerned to preserve the current stability along its own disputed frontier with China. Further afield, Chinese intervention in Myanmar might even be welcomed if it tempers China’s aggressive ambitions across the Taiwan Strait.

Reactions in Southeast Asia would probably not pose a serious threat to relations with China, despite Myanmar being member of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations. Some countries would be concerned if China moved to protect what it calls ‘overseas Chinese’ in Myanmar, given Southeast Asia’s sizeable ethnic-Chinese population. But, overall, ASEAN would be pragmatically disposed to accept a Chinese intervention in Myanmar provided it were characterised as limited and stabilising. After all, ASEAN’s efforts to improve the situation since full-scale civil war erupted in 2020 have proved ineffectual and sapped the organisation’s dwindling diplomatic credibility.

In some respects, Myanmar’s situation is reminiscent of South Vietnam in 1964–65, when the United States was drawn into a direct combat role in order to prop up a corrupt and unpopular military government, in danger of losing a domestic insurgency. The parallel is imperfect, but China could become militarily involved not because it wants to, but because it feels compelled to act. Intervention in a civil war is always high risk, even if the protagonist convinces itself that its goals are limited and achievable. History attests that the entrance is easier to locate than the exit.

Euan Graham is acting director for Defence Strategy and National Security at ASPI.

This article was originally published on The Strategist.
Views in this article are author’s own and do not necessarily reflect CGS policy.