It was one of the biggest rebel victories of the four-year civil war in Myanmar. Thousands of resistance fighters from half a dozen rebel armies took the city of Lashio and overran a military command center 75 miles from the Chinese border.
Facing junta artillery and airstrikes, the rebels attacked with small arms, rocket-propelled grenades and drones, ultimately winning in intense street fighting. The triumph in August came at a cost of more than 500 fighters killed, the rebels said.
But in a stunning reversal, resistance forces quietly abandoned Lashio, in northern Shan State, last month without a shot fired and handed their hard-won territory back to the junta. A military convoy of 200 vehicles flying the national flag rolled into the city in late April and reclaimed control.
Rebel leaders say the sudden withdrawal was a result of pressure from China, which has been intervening in the civil war to help the junta. Beijing, rebel leaders and analysts say, is protecting its financial interests in Myanmar that are worth billions of dollars, including pipelines that transport crude oil and natural gas nearly 500 miles from the Bay of Bengal to China, and infrastructure projects being built under the umbrella of the Belt and Road Initiative.
To force the rebels out of Lashio, China blocked border trade, cut off power and internet service in nearby towns and reportedly detained the commander of the main rebel group after he crossed into China.
“China claims not to interfere in Myanmar’s internal affairs, but in Lashio, they clearly stepped in and managed the situation directly,” said Ni Ni Kyaw, spokeswoman for the People’s Liberation Army, a pro-democracy force that joined in the battle for Lashio. “China’s approach to Myanmar’s affairs is driven purely by self-interest.”
She called the rebels’ withdrawal from the city “heartbreaking.”
While Beijing has publicly proclaimed a policy of noninterference in Myanmar’s affairs, it has a long history of managing competing interests there, including by supplying weapons to both the Myanmar military and the ethnic groups — sometimes fierce rivals — that have long operated in the area.
“It’s been an open secret for years that China was arming all sides of the conflict,” said David Mathieson, an independent analyst who has long followed events in Myanmar. “China is not interested in peace. It is only interested in itself, and you can see that in its actions.”
The Ta’ang National Liberation Army, an ethnic armed organization that seized territory near Lashio during the same offensive, said it is resisting a separate demand from China that it retreat from the five towns it captured.
“Now, China is pressuring us to return those towns,” the group’s general secretary, Colonel Tar Pan Hla, said in an interview. “They’ve warned us not to engage in battles along the China-Myanmar border or near the pipelines. In fact, they’ve explicitly said no battles should take place anywhere they have vested interests.”
This month, China’s president, Xi Jinping, met publicly in Moscow with the junta leader, Sr. Gen. Min Aung Hlaing, for the first time since the February 2021 coup.
Mr. Xi told the general that China supports Myanmar in safeguarding its “territorial integrity and national stability” and expressed hope that it would take steps “to ensure the safety of Chinese personnel, institutions and projects in Myanmar,” Chinese state media reported.
In the past 18 months, the junta has ceded significant ground to resistance forces, a patchwork of recently formed pro-democracy forces and ethnic armed organizations that have long fought the military. The rebels now hold more than half the country’s territory.
But the junta continues to control the country’s central core, including the major cities, airports and seaports. The resistance is hampered by its lack of sophisticated weapons and central command structure.
Unable to defeat the rebels on the ground, the military has waged a relentless air campaign against civilians, often using Chinese-made aircraft and drones.
After a devastating 7.7-magnitude earthquake struck central Myanmar in late March, the junta declared a cease-fire but continued the daily bombing of civilians in areas ravaged by the quake, killing more than 330 people, according to the opposition National Unity Government, which seeks to supplant the junta.
In mid-May, military aircraft bombed a school in the Sagaing Region, killing 22 students and two teachers. Gruesome photos showed the children’s bodies laid out in a row in the schoolyard.
The rebels’ victory in Shan State was led by the Myanmar National Democratic Alliance Army, sometimes known as the Kokang Group. It is made up of ethnic Kokang, who are of Han Chinese descent and speak Mandarin but live on the Myanmar side of the border. Many people in Myanmar see them as Chinese.
While the group has long controlled its homeland along the border — with the help of weaponry supplied by China — it took control of Lashio for the first time in August, capturing thousands of prisoners, including three generals.
That was clearly a step too far for Chinese officials.
In November, Chinese authorities detained the group’s commander, Peng Daxun, after he crossed the border, and placed him under house arrest, according to his supporters. China’s foreign ministry denied he was under arrest and said he was recuperating in China from medical treatment.
At the same time, Beijing was displeased that the junta was bombing Lashio and causing extensive damage in the city center, said Mr. Mathieson, the analyst. The airstrikes killed more than a dozen civilians and destroyed 180 buildings, including universities, a high school, temples, hotels and dozens of shops at the city’s main public market, according to the Shan Human Rights Foundation.
Chinese officials warned the rebels that if they didn’t withdraw, the junta’s airstrikes would continue and more civilians would die. They also made it clear that the junta could not be allowed to collapse, said a Kokang army official who asked not to be identified because he was not authorized to speak publicly.
When the junta convoy rolled into Lashio, several vehicles had Chinese lettering identifying them as peace monitors.
Questioned that day about the handover, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Guo Jiakun reiterated China’s policy of noninterference but said Beijing supports Myanmar “in safeguarding independence, sovereignty, national unity and territorial integrity,” echoing the junta’s own talking points.
During the eight months the Kokang Group controlled Lashio, it tried to improve health care by recruiting doctors who had fled from areas under military control.
One such physician, who asked to be identified only as Dr. Min out of fear for his safety, said he watched as the army rolled back into Lashio. His cousin, he said, was one of the rebel fighters who died in the battle to take the city.
“When I saw the military convoy, hundreds of vehicles entering the city, some with Chinese lettering, I was angry and overwhelmed by grief,” he said. “I thought of all the soldiers who gave their lives to take the city, and how those lives were wasted.”
Richard C. Paddock has worked as a foreign correspondent in 50 countries on five continents with postings in Moscow, Jakarta, Singapore and Bangkok. He has spent nearly a dozen years reporting on Southeast Asia, which he has covered since 2016 as a contributor to The Times.
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