The Latest on Southeast Asia: Min Aung Hlaing’s Charm Offensive

Myanmar junta chief Min Aung Hlaing made a working visit to China from August 30 to September 6. At the invitation of Chinese president Xi Jinping, he participated in Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) meetings and attended China’s World War II victory day parade. His high-profile trip yielded two bilateral meetings with President Xi and Indian prime minister Narendra Modi—part of ongoing attempts to boost his regime’s international legitimacy and sidestep diplomatic isolation.

Xi and Min Aung Hlaing met on August 30, celebrating 75 years of China-Myanmar relations and emphasizing the supposed strength of the two countries’ “pauk-phaw” (fraternal) relationship. Stressing shared interests in economic and social development, Chinese and junta-aligned companies signed memoranda of understanding for infrastructure improvement projects under the Belt and Road Initiative.

In Min Aung Hlaing’s bilateral meeting with Modi the next day, the Indian prime minister expressed his support for the junta’s plan to hold elections on December 28. Modi announced that India would send observers to ensure the polls are “fair and inclusive,” an impossibility when the junta does not control most of the country and has allowed only select parties to register. The elections have been denounced by much of the international community as a sham to cement junta power. 

Though Min Aung Hlaing’s meetings with Xi and Modi help normalize his rule among a small group of countries, the junta remains internationally isolated and condemned. The regime’s most famous political prisoner, former state counsellor and Nobel laureate Aung San Suu Kyi, has been imprisoned since the 2021 military coup. She is reportedly suffering from a heart ailment and has requested access to a cardiologist, but it is unclear if that has been granted. Junta-controlled media recently dismissed those claims as meant to “distract” from Min Aung Hlaing’s successful visit to China.

The junta, meanwhile, has made marginal gains on the battlefield in recent months. In July, its forces recaptured Nawngkhio, a key border town in Shan State, from the Ta’ang National Liberation Army. The town sits on a vital trade route between China and Myanmar. On September 5, the junta retook a strategic outpost protecting an ammunition factory in Magwe Region. A day later, it regained effective control of Asian Highway 1 that leads to Myawaddy, a township along the Thai border held by the junta-aligned Karen National Army (KNA) and infamous as a trading, gambling, and scam center hub. The United States sanctioned the KNA and its leader in May, and on September 8 announced new sanctions on scam center operators in Myawaddy (along with others in Cambodia). 

These modest gains do not represent a wider shift in momentum, as the junta continues to lose ground or face intense pressure in other parts of the country. Recent conscription has stabilized the regime’s manpower problem and China and Russia have helped it access enough fuel and ammunition to keep up aerial and artillery strikes. But there is little chance the junta can regain, much less stabilize control, over enough territory by year-end to legitimize its planned elections.

Japhet Quitzon is an Associate Fellow for the Southeast Asia Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) in Washington, D.C. Gregory B. Poling is a senior fellow and director for the Southeast Asia Program and the Asia Maritime Transparency Initiative at CSIS. 

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