The cost of Trump-Xi detente will be paid in Myanmar

As Donald Trump and Xi Jinping embraced the language of “constructive strategic stability” in Beijing, Myanmar’s war was again showing what calm between great powers can mean at China’s frontier.

In May, the Myanmar military renewed offensives toward strategic border regions, including in Kachin State, where mines along the Chinese border produce roughly half of the world’s heavy rare earths. Those mines feed China’s dominant rare-earth supply chain, even as the White House listed Chinese commitments to address rare-earth shortages among the summit’s economic gains.

Yet Myanmar was not the main headline from the Trump-Xi summit. And between Washington’s trade deals and Beijing’s strategic stability lies the danger for countries trapped inside great-power calculations: “strategic stability” for whom?

A Trump-Xi detente does not need to mention Myanmar to endanger it. If Washington focuses on tariffs, the Middle East and critical minerals while avoiding Beijing’s core interests, Myanmar’s democratic resistance risks becoming one of the first casualties.

The corridor, not the ideology

To understand the threat, Washington must see Myanmar the way Beijing does. China begins not with Myanmar’s political system, but with borders, critical minerals, pipelines and access to the Indian Ocean.

Its maritime centerpiece is Kyaukphyu in Rakhine State. The planned deep-sea port, tied to the China-Myanmar Economic Corridor and existing pipelines to China’s southern Yunnan province, would give China’s southwest a broader outlet to the Indian Ocean and a hedge against the Strait of Malacca, a maritime chokepoint that would jeopardize China’s energy and other crucial imports in a conflict with the US.

For Myanmar’s people, however, Kyaukphyu sits inside a country devastated by military rule, where the junta’s control has sharply eroded and China’s projects are increasingly exposed to battlefield realities. This is the contradiction in Beijing’s Myanmar policy: it wants stability, but works hand-in-hand with the military that destroyed it.

After the junta’s sham election in December and January and coup-maker Senior General Min Aung Hlaing’s elevation to president of a reputedly civilian regime, China moved quickly to treat the new arrangement as a going concern.

On April 25, China’s readout of Foreign Minister Wang Yi’s meeting with Min Aung Hlaing called him Myanmar’s “new president” and reaffirmed Beijing’s “three firm supports”, reputedly for Myanmar’s development path, sovereignty and territorial integrity, and peace and reconciliation.

Min Aung Hlaing responded by pledging to advance the corridor, deepen energy cooperation, maintain border stability and protect Chinese personnel and projects. China did not have to call the election free or fair – it only had to treat its result as useful to its interests.

But recognition is only one part of Beijing’s approach. China is also pressing the resistance when its interests are at stake. The Kachin Independence Army (KIA) has faced Chinese pressure in northern Kachin, where border routes and rare-earth deposits are of particular importance to Beijing. In Rakhine State, China has reportedly pressed the Arakan Army (AA) over fighting around Kyaukphyu, the terminus of its pipelines and planned deep-sea port.

From Beijing’s perspective, this is conflict management. From greater Myanmar’s perspective, it is selective coercion. The junta bombs civilians nationwide, yet China’s pressure is asserted hardest on armed groups threatening border trade, mineral supplies, pipelines and port plans.

The stability trap

Some in Washington may think that if China can secure trade routes and mineral supplies, Myanmar should be left to Beijing. To the Trump administration, Myanmar may look like a low-priority crisis. But if US policy reduces it to tariffs, rare earths or broader China management, the junta will understand the signal.

The junta has already tried to speak Trump’s language. In July 2025, Min Aung Hlaing praised Trump and sought relief from tariffs and sanctions. Washington kept its steep tariffs in place but appeared to oblige by lifting sanctions on several junta-linked figures and firms – though US officials said the move was unrelated to the general’s request.

Days later, the regime hired Washington-based DCI Group for US$3 million a year to lobby for the rebuilding of US ties, including on trade and natural resources.

Beijing and Moscow, meanwhile, are offering the junta another kind of protection. After Trump left Beijing, Xi and Vladimir Putin issued a joint statement defending non-interference and opposing unilateral sanctions. It did not mention Myanmar, but its logic offered the junta diplomatic cover against outside pressure.

The US Congress is sending a different message. The bipartisan BRAVE Burma Act, introduced in March, seeks to block junta funding, tighten sanctions and counter Chinese and Russian influence.

US Senator Mitch McConnell warned that the junta’s sham elections “threaten to deepen the PRC’s influence in a critical region.” The Quad reinforced that warning on May 26, calling for an end to violence in Myanmar and the release of those unjustly detained while also advancing critical mineral cooperation.

A strategic alternative

The junta isnt the only actor capable of dealing with China. The National Unity Government (NUG), Myanmar’s parallel pro-democracy government formed after the 2021 coup, maintains a 10-point China policy that commits to good-neighborly ties, the “One China” principle, the protection of lawful Chinese investments and cooperation against transnational crime.

Beijing may not trust the NUG, but its policy shows that protecting Chinese interests does not require military rule. A democratic Myanmar is not inherently anti-China, but a junta-run Myanmar will be permanently unstable.

That is why Washington should not concede Myanmar to Beijing, openly or quietly. Instead, US interests would be better served by implementing the principles of the BRAVE Burma Act, rejecting the junta’s sham election, avoiding senior-level engagement that legitimizes Min Aung Hlaing, keeping sanctions focused on military revenue and aviation fuel, and supporting cross-border humanitarian aid.

It should recognize Myanmar’s democratic and ethnic resistance forces as partners in a federal future, not simply gatekeepers to minerals coveted by competing powers. This does not require turning Myanmar into a proxy battlefield. It requires helping Myanmar avoid becoming a Chinese-managed client state under a failing military regime.

A stable US-China relationship is not a bad thing. No one in Southeast Asia wants war between the two great powers. But “constructive strategic stability” built on the abandonment of smaller nations is not realism – it is US strategic retreat.

In Myanmar, leaving the resistance to great-power bargaining would reduce its people to the condition described by an old Burmese proverb: “the cow survives only if the tiger shows mercy.”

The Trump-Xi language of strategic stability may sound calm in Beijing and Washington. In Myanmar, it raises a harder question: If great powers agree not to cross each other’s red lines, who will protect the people trapped inside them?

Nyein Chan Aye is a Washington-based Burmese journalist who previously worked for the BBC and Voice of America and writes on Myanmar, China, the US and regional affairs.