Myanmar Is Shaping Up To Be The Next Front Of The Sino-US New Cold War

China wants to retain access to Kachin State’s rare earths, the US wants to poach them, and their escalating competition over this part of Myanmar could make it the next New Cold War flashpoint.

Reuters reported that the US’ Myanmar policy might shift towards more diplomatic engagement with either the ruling junta or the Kachin Independence Army (KIA) in an attempt to obtain access to the enormous rare earth mineral reserves in the second’s eponymous state. At present, the US is suspected of clandestinely supporting some of the armed anti-junta groups, but the KIA isn’t thought to have benefited due to their isolated position along Myanmar’s mountainous border with China and India.

This geography poses a challenge to the redirection of these resources from China to India for example regardless of Kachin State’s final political status, whether autonomous within a (con)federated Myanmar or independent, but that’s assuming that China doesn’t intervene. Reuters cited an expert on Kachin State who said that “If they want to transport the rare earths from these mines, which are all on the Chinese border, to India, there’s only one road. And the Chinese would certainly step in and stop it."

The reports late last year about the joint security firm that China and Myanmar were planning at the time were analyzed here and concluded that the risks associated with even a PMC-led intervention in support of the China-Myanmar Economic Corridor (CMEC) make this scenario unlikely. For as important as CMEC is for helping China reduce its logistical dependence on the easily blockaded Strait of Malacca, Kachin’s rare earth minerals are even more important, so its calculations could change.

Nevertheless, China is known for advancing its national interests through hybrid economic-diplomatic means, not military force. It’s therefore much more probable that it might soon ramp up these efforts with either the junta, the KIA, or both to preempt any forthcoming US diplomatic campaign. The first scenario would aim to restore the military’s control over Kachin’s rare earth reserves, the second would work towards Kachin’s de facto independence, while the third would seek that state’s autonomy.

In the order that they were mentioned: the military is on the backfoot in Kachin despite over four years of Chinese support so it’s unlikely that any new approach by China will reverse this trend; China’s decades of engagement with eastern Shan State’s de facto independent United Wa State Army (including over rare earths) could serve as a precedent for something similar with the KIA; while seeking Kachin’s autonomy in a Chinese-mediated political settlement would be the best-case scenario for Beijing.

In any case, it’s unimaginable that China will let the US poach Kachin’s rare earth reserves without making any attempt to preempt this powerplay, so the Sino-US rivalry in Myanmar is expected to intensify. Kachin is at the center of this struggle, which his nowadays driven by access to that region’s rare earths even though it used to be about CMEC, with Myanmar’s political future (centralized, decentralized, devolved, or partitioned) only being a means to the aforementioned end.

China has the edge over the US due to geography (including the nearness of its rare earth processing facilities), its existing ties with both the junta and the KIA, and the allure that any new approach (possibly linked to CMEC) could have for facilitating a pragmatic deal between them. That said, the US might at the very least try to provoke an armed Chinese intervention of some sort to embroil it in a quagmire even if the odds of this scenario are low, all as part of their escalating New Cold War rivalry over Myanmar.