Trump-Xi Détente Risks Abandoning Myanmar’s Democratic Resistance

As Donald Trump and Xi Jinping embraced the language of “constructive strategic stability” in Beijing, Myanmar’s ongoing conflict demonstrated what calm between great powers can mean at China’s frontier.

In May, the Myanmar military renewed offensives targeting strategic border regions, including Kachin State, where mines along the Chinese border produce roughly half of the world’s heavy rare earths. These mines supply China’s dominant rare-earth supply chain, even as the White House highlighted Chinese commitments to address rare-earth shortages among the summit’s economic achievements.

Yet Myanmar was not the main headline from the Trump-Xi summit. Between Washington’s trade deals and Beijing’s strategic stability lies the danger for countries caught inside great-power calculations: “strategic stability” for whom?

A Trump-Xi détente does not need to mention Myanmar to endanger it. If Washington focuses on tariffs, the Middle East, and critical minerals while avoiding Beijing’s core interests, Myanmar’s democratic resistance risks becoming one of the first casualties.

The corridor, not the ideology

To understand the threat, Washington must view Myanmar through Beijing’s lens. China prioritizes borders, critical minerals, pipelines, and access to the Indian Ocean over Myanmar’s political system.

Its maritime centerpiece is Kyaukphyu in Rakhine State. The planned deep-sea port, tied to the China-Myanmar Economic Corridor and existing pipelines to China’s southern Yunnan province, would provide China’s southwest with broader Indian Ocean access and a hedge against the Strait of Malacca, a maritime chokepoint that could jeopardize China’s energy and crucial imports during conflicts with the US.

For Myanmar’s people, however, Kyaukphyu sits within a country devastated by military rule, where the junta’s control has sharply eroded and China’s projects grow increasingly exposed to battlefield realities. This reveals a contradiction in Beijing’s Myanmar policy: it seeks stability while working hand-in-hand with the military that destroyed it.

Following the junta’s sham elections in December and January and Senior General Min Aung Hlaing’s elevation to president of a reputedly civilian regime, China quickly treated the new arrangement as legitimate. On April 25, China’s foreign minister Wang Yi’s meeting with Min Aung Hlaing referred to him as Myanmar’s “new president” and reaffirmed Beijing’s “three firm supports” for Myanmar’s development path, sovereignty, territorial integrity, and peace and reconciliation.

Min Aung Hlaing responded by pledging to advance the corridor, deepen energy cooperation, maintain border stability, and protect Chinese personnel and projects. China did not need to validate the election’s legitimacy—only treat its outcome as useful to Chinese interests.

Recognition represents only one aspect of Beijing’s approach. China also pressures resistance forces when its interests are threatened. The Kachin Independence Army (KIA) has faced Chinese pressure in northern Kachin, where border routes and rare-earth deposits matter most to Beijing. In Rakhine State, China has reportedly pressed the Arakan Army (AA) regarding fighting around Kyaukphyu, the terminus of its pipelines and planned deep-sea port.

From Beijing’s standpoint, this constitutes conflict management. From Myanmar’s broader perspective, it amounts to selective coercion. The junta bombs civilians nationwide, yet China’s pressure concentrates on armed groups threatening border trade, mineral supplies, pipelines, and port plans.

The stability trap

Some in Washington may assume that if China secures trade routes and mineral supplies, Myanmar should be left to Beijing. For the Trump administration, Myanmar may appear a low-priority crisis. However, reducing US policy to tariffs, rare earths, and broader China management sends a clear signal to the junta.

The junta has attempted to mirror Trump’s rhetoric. In July 2025, Min Aung Hlaing praised Trump and sought tariff and sanction relief. Washington maintained its steep tariffs but appeared to comply by lifting sanctions on several junta-linked figures and firms—though officials claimed the move was unrelated to the general’s request.

Shortly after, the regime hired Washington-based DCI Group for $3 million annually to lobby for restored US ties, including on trade and natural resources.

Beijing and Moscow are offering the junta alternative protection. After Trump left Beijing, Xi and Vladimir Putin issued a joint statement defending non-interference and opposing unilateral sanctions. While not mentioning Myanmar, the statement provided diplomatic cover against external pressure.

The US Congress is sending a contrary message. The bipartisan BRAVE Burma Act, introduced in March, seeks to block junta funding, tighten sanctions, and counter Chinese and Russian influence.

US Senator Mitch McConnell warned that the junta’s sham elections “threaten to deepen the PRC’s influence in a critical region.” The Quad reinforced this warning on May 26, calling for an end to violence in Myanmar and the release of unjustly detained individuals while advancing critical mineral cooperation.

A strategic alternative

The junta is not Myanmar’s only viable partner for managing Chinese relations. The National Unity Government (NUG), Myanmar’s parallel pro-democracy government formed after the 2021 coup, maintains a 10-point China policy committing to good-neighborly ties, the “One China” principle, protection of lawful Chinese investments, and cooperation against transnational crime.

Beijing may distrust the NUG, but its policy demonstrates that protecting Chinese interests does not require military rule. A democratic Myanmar is not inherently anti-China; a junta-run Myanmar, however, remains permanently unstable.

This is why Washington should not cede Myanmar to Beijing, openly or quietly. US interests would be better served by implementing the BRAVE Burma Act principles, rejecting the junta’s sham election, avoiding senior-level engagement that legitimizes Min Aung Hlaing, maintaining sanctions focused on military revenue and aviation fuel, and supporting cross-border humanitarian aid.

The US should recognize Myanmar’s democratic and ethnic resistance forces as partners in a federal future, not merely gatekeepers for minerals coveted by competing powers. This does not require transforming Myanmar into a proxy battlefield. It requires preventing a Chinese-managed client state under a failing military regime.

A stable US-China relationship benefits all parties. No one in Southeast Asia desires war between the two great powers. However, “constructive strategic stability” built on abandoning smaller nations constitutes strategic retreat, not realism.

In Myanmar, allowing great-power bargain-driven abandonment reduces its people to the condition described by an old Burmese proverb: “the cow survives only if the tiger shows mercy.”

The Trump-Xi language of strategic stability may sound calm in Beijing and Washington. In Myanmar, it raises a harder question: If great powers agree not to cross each other’s red lines, who will protect the people trapped within them?

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