Doubts over just how long the China-brokered truce will last in Myanmar

A China-brokered truce between Myanmar’s junta and militants may not lead to a lasting ceasefire because the rebels are determined to fight for autonomy, according to observers. But Beijing may continue to intervene to restore stability in northern Myanmar as it strives to secure the border and stamp out cyber scams in the region that have ensnared many Chinese nationals, they added. China’s foreign ministry said on Thursday that Beijing had mediated peace talks between Myanmar’s junta and the Three Brotherhood Alliance, a bloc of regional rebels. The alliance comprises the Arakan Army from Rakhine, the Myanmar National Democratic Alliance Army from Kokang, and the Ta’ang National Liberation Army from Ta’ang. Ministry spokeswoman Mao Ning said that in the talks representatives from the parties reached an agreement on a “temporary truce and maintenance of dialogue”. Mao added that combat in northern Myanmar “has declined significantly”. Armed insurgencies have broken out in several fronts across Myanmar in recent weeks, posing the most serious threat to the junta since it seized power in a coup two years ago. In particular, fierce fighting had persisted since late October in the northern state of Shan, which borders Yunnan province in China’s southwest. China and Myanmar share a 2,000km (1,250-mile) border and the fighting has closed in on a number of China’s border towns several times, forcing residents to evacuate. Tens of thousands of refugees have also fled Myanmar because of the conflict. While Mao said China hoped the parties in Myanmar could realise their consensus, analysts were pessimistic that the truce would last. They said while both the Chinese and Myanmese governments had issued statements about the peace talks, the rebels had not taken a public position. Instead, the alliance said on social media on Wednesday that it “reaffirms [its] commitment to end dictatorship”. “Significant progress made … Our dedication remains strong with the entire Myanmar population,” the alliance said. China indicts 52 per cent more cyber scammers than last year amid crackdown Kalvin Fung Ka-shing, a former assistant lecturer at the Chinese University of Hong Kong who conducts research on Southeast Asian politics at Waseda University in Tokyo, said the alliance remained committed to achieving autonomy and the junta to reasserting control in the peripheries. “There is still a high chance that violence will erupt any time,” Fung said. But Liu Zongyi, a senior fellow of the South Asia and China Centre at Shanghai Institutes for International Studies, said it was possible that the junta and the rebels might return to the previous status quo. “It is possible for Myanmar to achieve a truce and maintain the status quo between Myanmar’s central government and its local forces,” Liu said. “Myanmar’s junta and localities have long been in a stalemate and are unable to eliminate or take over each other. Because of internal and external pressure, the two sides may just return to that status quo.” Asean could be ‘caught off guard’ if the Myanmar junta were to collapse Liu said Beijing, which has a close relationship with the militant groups in northern Myanmar, might be able to apply greater pressure such as sending troops to police the border areas. Besides border safety, cracking down on cyber scams is another incentive for Beijing to intervene in Myanmar’s internal conflict. With its close cultural and political ties with China, northern Myanmar has become a major base for cyber scammers who often lure Chinese with lucrative jobs and then coerce them into engaging in criminal activities. The scams have mushroomed under the watch of the junta government and the local militants and at least 120,000 people in Myanmar “may be held in situations where they are forced to carry out online scams”, the United Nations human rights office said in a report in August. Earlier this year, Beijing vowed to double down on tackling the scams in northern Myanmar as domestic concerns of lawlessness in the areas exploded. Police in China have issued a series of wanted lists for members of the “big four families” in the Kokang Self-Administered Zone, including for Bai Suocheng, the zone’s former chairman. Compared with China’s ambiguity towards Myanmar’s internal affairs in public, Beijing has adopted a “zero tolerance” attitude to the scams. So much so that the positions of the parties in the conflict towards cyber fraud “may somewhat influence China’s perception of them”, Liu said. Is it the beginning of the end for Myanmar’s junta? A Chinese professor researching Myanmar and who declined to be named due to the sensitivity of the issue, said China was concerned about various crimes in the area, including drug trafficking, and hoped to bolster stability in Myanmar to change the underlying conditions for them. He said people along the border had a close relationship and that resulted in cross-border crime. “China and Myanmar are neighbours, and people in China and Myanmar’s border are of the same ethnicity. They just live on the two sides of the border. China and Myanmar are two separate countries but both share a lot of common interests,” he said. He said the solution was to restore law and order in northern Myanmar and China needed to intervene more to realise that.