STEVE INSKEEP, HOST:
Myanmar, the country formerly known as Burma, is fighting a civil war. It's gone on since a coup in 2021, which deposed an elected government led by Aung San Suu Kyi. The conflict has killed thousands and displaced millions, and for much of the world, it's a forgotten crisis. Our colleague, Michael Sullivan, did not forget. And he found that China, the great power next door, has become involved.
MICHAEL SULLIVAN, BYLINE: In October 2023, three powerful ethnic armed groups launched an audacious assault on Myanmar army positions near the border with China. They were wildly successful - maybe too successful.
RICHARD HORSEY: What happened was that their successes became an existential threat to the regime.
SULLIVAN: That's Richard Horsey of the International Crisis Group.
HORSEY: And China, although it doesn't like the regime, doesn't want the regime to fall. It doesn't want the chaos and uncertainty of a power vacuum.
SULLIVAN: He says China miscalculated by tacitly green-lighting that offensive, in part because it wanted the groups to rein in the online scam centers operating along the China border that had ensnared many of its citizens. That worked, but when the militias kept advancing, China balked, demanding they stop and start talking to the military.
JASON TOWER: They're really playing hardball, I'd say.
SULLIVAN: Jason Tower is Myanmar country director with the government-funded U.S. Institute of Peace.
TOWER: There have been efforts to cut off access to the China border. There have been moves to cut off access to even very basic food items, so rice and oil. So I think under all of this pressure, the MNDAA and TNLA, they really are running out of options.
SULLIVAN: That's the rebel groups, the Myanmar National Democratic Alliance Army and the Ta'ang National Liberation Army, who, under pressure from China, declared unilateral ceasefires last month. The MNDAA even held talks with representatives of Myanmar's military in southern China.
(SOUNDBITE OF AIRSTRIKE)
SULLIVAN: For its part, Myanmar's military has responded by limiting punishing airstrikes like this one it's used routinely to target civilian populations controlled by these groups. This woman just returned to Lashio in the northeast of the country, a town seized by the rebels in August. She doesn't want to be identified for safety reasons.
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON: (Speaking Burmese).
SULLIVAN: "For three weeks, there've been no airstrikes," she says. But only about a third of the population has returned, and most of the shops have almost nothing to sell. If the tenuous ceasefires hold, her situation could improve. But that doesn't mean an end to the fighting elsewhere, says Min Zin, who heads the Institute for Strategy and Policy in Myanmar.
MIN ZIN: You can see the major ethnic group might slow down or de-escalate because of China pressure, but they can still outsource their conflict to the broader Burma area.
SULLIVAN: Which suits many of these minority ethnic groups just fine, many of whom, he says, have been battling the military for decades and are more interested in autonomy than the military's ouster.
ZIN: At the end, because of China pressure and because of the reality on the ground - the brutality of the Myanmar military airstrikes and drone strikes - I think at the end, they will choose to consolidate what they have achieved rather than keep on going, like never-ending fighting.
SULLIVAN: That's if Myanmar's military goes along, however informally, even as it continues to lose ground elsewhere. It's another reason China continues to lean hard on Myanmar military leader Min Aung Hlaing to find an off-ramp to the conflict through planned elections. Richard Horsey of the International Crisis Group.
HORSEY: China believes that elections will bring a little bit more predictability because there'll be a constitutional framework again. And China believes that elections will dilute Min Aung Hlaing's power because he would have to give up either the presidency or the commander-in-chief position, and they need that if they're to move ahead with their projects.
SULLIVAN: Horsey says those elections now seem likely before the end of the year.
For NPR News, I'm Michael Sullivan.
(SOUNDBITE OF ART MUSIC'S "JANUARY") Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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