When Myanmar’s military-backed government urged Washington to invest in its rare earths, its leader Min Aung Hlaing was offering more than minerals. He was inviting the United States into a business China dominates and a peace process Beijing has long sought to influence.
On November 9, Washington lobbying firm DCI Group, in an article published on behalf of Myanmar’s military-controlled information ministry, urged the United States to treat Myanmar as “a critical minerals priority, not simply a diplomatic challenge.”
The appeal followed quiet US meetings with regime officials in Naypyidaw and Tokyo reported exclusively by Reuters.
By any reading, Washington is providing Min Aung Hlaing the opening. A US State Department strategy published in October envisages lasting peace by 2030, with forums on federalism and territorial boundaries explicitly linked to access to rare earths. It also seeks three American commercial or investment deals worth more than US$5 million each.
But Myanmar’s generals cannot hand Washington mines they do not control. The Kachin Independence Army seized major mining areas around Chipwi and Pangwa from military-aligned forces in 2024.
Nearly all of Myanmar’s heavy rare earths are currently sent to China for processing, and Myanmar lacks the infrastructure and know-how to quickly build an independent supply chain. No agreement signed with the US can change that any time soon.
The coup leader-turned-president may believe he can play two powers against each other, loosening China’s grip and gaining legitimacy in the West. Instead, he is testing Beijing on two sensitive issues: who ultimately mediates Myanmar’s scattered civil wars, many fought along China’s borders, and who has access to its minerals.
Beijing’s red lines
In August 2024, Foreign Minister Wang Yi set out China’s three “bottom lines”: Myanmar should avoid civil strife, stay within ASEAN and resist outside interference.
Beijing also pressured the Myanmar National Democratic Alliance Army (MNDAA), a Kokang ethnic armed group that led the offensive against the military in northern Shan State, to distance itself from opposition forces it viewed as close to Washington.
Reports based on reputed leaked minutes from an August 2024 meeting between Chinese envoy Deng Xijun and the United Wa State Army, a powerful ethnic armed group based along China’s border, exposed Beijing’s concern that the United States and Europe could gain influence through the National Unity Government (NUG), a parallel administration of mainly ousted National League for Democracy members formed after the 2021 coup.
China pressed the Wa to restrict supplies to the MNDAA. An American peace initiative tied to rare earths would test those same red lines.
Smiles in Beijing, open border gates
Beijing has maintained diplomatic courtesies with the coup-installed regime while the West has shunned it as anti-democratic. On November 3, Foreign Minister Wang Yi met Myanmar’s Planning and Investment Minister Aung Kyaw Hoe, and referred to China as a reliable partner.
Yet he also pressed for progress on the China-Myanmar Economic Corridor, a Belt and Road Initiative-driven project that envisions building roads and railways connecting southern China to Myanmar’s coastal region, opening onto the Bay of Bengal. He also called on Myanmar’s military government to protect Chinese personnel and investments.
At the border, however, a different pattern is emerging. Reports show that Beijing has gradually eased restrictions at selected crossings in Kachin and northern Shan states in recent months, allowing machinery and other goods to pass while largely restricting military supplies.
Shan Herald, a local news agency, reported on November 9 that junta checkpoints were blocking shipments that China had permitted through. Beijing has commercial and security reasons to reopen trade. But the easing also shows how it can improve armed groups’ economic position while pressuring the regime, without declaring a policy change.
For Min Aung Hlaing, even reopening border gates can be a warning from Beijing. At an October 28 cabinet meeting, the coup-maker general complained that traders using unauthorized border routes were paying armed groups fighting his forces.
His remarks could be read as a thinly veiled complaint directed at Beijing, although he did not mention China by name.
Trust deficit
Min Aung Hlaing’s gamble with US engagement makes more sense when you remember where his army’s instincts come from. Its dependence on Beijing has deepened since the 2021 coup, but its suspicion of China reaches back generations.
Under General Ne Win, who seized power in a putsch in 1962, the Chinese-backed Communist Party of Burma became one of the military’s fiercest enemies. Following anti-Chinese riots in Yangon in 1967, Beijing expanded its support for communist insurgents. Min Aung Hlaing’s generation was trained in an institution shaped by that war.
A declassified 1966 US memorandum to President Lyndon Johnson noted that most Burmese viewed China as a long-term threat and quietly appreciated an American presence in Southeast Asia, despite its public neutrality.
The Tatmadaw’s “people’s war” doctrine, developed during the 1960s, addressed insurgency and foreign invasion. Military-run weapons factories were concentrated in Magway and Bago, many west of the Irrawaddy, deep in the country’s interior and strategically far from the Chinese frontier.
That mistrust has never lifted. After the military lost much of northern Shan State to insurgents in 2023 and 2024, pro-junta nationalists publicly accused Beijing of supporting its enemies.
International Crisis Group documented anti-China demonstrations tolerated or encouraged by the regime, while Myanmar Witness separately identified anti-Chinese rhetoric among pro-military social media users reacting to Operation 1027, a sweeping, successful offensive launched by the Three Brotherhood Alliance, a coalition of powerful ethnic armies traditionally seen as close to China.
Border games
The October 2023 offensive demonstrated both the Myanmar army’s weakness and China’s leverage. Beijing initially tolerated the operation, which targeted scam networks preying on Chinese citizens. The alliance captured Kokang and, in 2024, the Northeastern Command in the strategic city of Lashio. It was a stick for the generals and a carrot for the resistance.
Then the balance shifted. As NUG-aligned forces fought alongside the alliance and the military faced possible collapse, Beijing grew concerned about wider instability, a possible power vacuum and the resistance’s perceived Western ties.
It then tightened border restrictions and pressed northern armed groups to negotiate with the junta, relinquishing captured territory in the process. The MNDAA returned urban Lashio in April 2025, and the Ta’ang National Liberation Army (TNLA) agreed to a Chinese-brokered ceasefire that October.
Beijing thus helped Min Aung Hlaing survive his worst battlefield reverses. He may now take that rescue for granted while courting Washington for legitimacy and a return to ASEAN’s table.
But China wants secure borders, trade and influence, not loyalty to one general. Beijing is unlikely to completely abandon the generals, but that does not mean its support is unconditional.
Washington warning, opposition opening
Washington should understand the lay of the land before engaging the regime. The generals do not control the principal mines, and trade still depends on Chinese roads, chemicals, buyers and processors.
Min Aung Hlaing’s lobbyists may see a way to turn American commercial interest into political recognition.
But US interests would be better served by engaging with authorities who actually control the territory and pursuing a credible settlement. A peace process built around ore, without political commitment or local consent, could deepen and already entrenched conflict.
For Myanmar’s opposition, growing tensions between Naypyidaw and Beijing are an opportunity.
The NUG, ethnic organizations and local administrations would be wise to show China that they can ensure border security, legitimate trade and a stable federal settlement. Simultaneously, they should demonstrate to Washington that they provide a sound basis for long-term investment.
Myanmar’s people need room for more than one foreign relationship, not another monopoly over their future. Min Aung Hlaing may think rare earths can buy him independence from China and win him Western legitimacy.
The irony is that he is offering something neither Washington nor Beijing can obtain from him alone: authority over land and people he does not meaningfully or legitimately govern.
Nyein Chan Aye is a Washington DC-based journalist writing on Myanmar, China, the US and regional affairs.
