How an anxious China is backing Myanmar's faltering junta in civil war

BANGKOK/BEIJING — When an alliance led by three rebel armies seized swathes of territory near Myanmar's border with China from the military junta last October, Beijing looked the other way.

A year on, rebel forces have ground down the junta, pushing the military out of vital borderlands and making inroads into the contested heart of Myanmar.

In response, China has sealed the border and shut off key imports to territory under rebel control, said a rebel leader and five border-area residents, a move analysts say aims to dissuade the alliance from further advances, including attacking the cultural capital of Mandalay.

After initially backing the Three Brotherhood Alliance to crack down on rampant border crime going unchecked by the junta, Beijing is increasingly alarmed at the rapid degeneration of the military, which it still sees as a guarantor of stability in its neighbour, said two analysts who track Myanmar-China relations.

China is also anxious about the ascendancy of rebel groups that have been helping the alliance and are also tied to the US-backed parallel National Unity Government, one of them said.

The previously unreported details of how Beijing is pressuring rebel forces, including by blocking imports — leading at least one group to withdraw from the fight — were described to Reuters by nine people with knowledge of the conflict.

One inflection point came in August, when the alliance took the northeastern town of Lashio, marking the first seizure of a regional military command in Myanmar's history.

The town of about 130,000 fell to the rebels twice as quickly as they had expected, said Ni Ni Kyaw, secretary of a communist resistance group fighting in support of Operation 1027, as the alliance-led offencive is