On April 7, 2025, Myanmar resistance forces raised their flags over two towns, Falam in Chin state and Indaw in Sagaing region. These were the latest in a string of hard-fought victories over a beleaguered junta that had blundered through a disastrous earthquake less than two weeks before. The battle of Falam in particular took the form of a grinding, multimonth siege. Yet this was overshadowed later that month when China’s special envoy to Myanmar openly drove into Lashio, a city seized in 2024 by resistance-aligned fighters, to oversee its return to junta control.
Myanmar’s resistance coalition of ousted parliamentarians, civil society, volunteer militias, and ethnic armed groups has wrested 50 percent of the country from its ruling junta. This success has generated optimism about the movement’s ability to eventually outlast and outfight the government. But time may not be on the rebels’ side, and the Chinese government certainly isn’t. This makes for a daunting combination. The slow pace of siege warfare allows Beijing time to divide the resistance and provide the junta a lifeline to political survival and victory.
The current round of fighting in Myanmar goes back to 2021, when the country’s military, called the Tatmadaw, overthrew the elected government of Aung San Suu Kyi. After months of protests and junta retaliation, ousted parliamentarians, civil society, and representatives from some ethnic groups formed a pro-democracy National Unity Government to fight back. It was then clear that Myanmar’s on-again, off-again civil war would reignite as the resistance declared a “Spring Revolution.” The Tatmadaw then felt confident it would outlast any armed opposition, especially as Myanmar’s numerous long-standing ethnic armed groups were largely neutral. Although motivated, civilian protesters struggled to secure homemade weapons and organize. Eventually, these became the People’s Defense Forces, operating either independently or under National Unity Government command.
Now, in 2025, the situation is reversed. Half a dozen major ethnic armies have entered the war and seized the border regions. The Tatmadaw faces a diverse coalition of ethnic armed groups, the People’s Defense Forces, civil society actors, and the National Unity Government. The ethnic armed groups, some decades old, are critical to this coalition. These include the China-influenced Three Brotherhood Alliance—the Arakan Army, the Myanmar National Democratic Alliance Army, and the Ta’ang National Liberation Army—and the Chin National Front, Kachin Independence Army, Karen National Union, and the Karenni Army, among other smaller groups, who are all closer to the National Unity Government.
The military has struggled to stem the bleeding, and resistance offensives are ongoing. Morale problems are widespread within the Tatmadaw. Persistent losses in the periphery have resulted in thousands of defections and the surrender of numerous junta forces, including two regional command headquarters and in one case a whole battalion. In the north, the Kachin Independence Army has rejected Beijing’s pressure by using China’s reliance upon its rare-earth mines as leverage, all while besieging Tatmadaw troops in the strategic town of Bhamo. Along the western seaboard, the Arakan Army has taken almost the entirety of Rakhine state save for Sittwe, the state capital, and Kyaukphyu, a Belt and Road Initiative port, and may soon threaten the junta’s invaluable arms factories. Elsewhere, in Chin, Kayin, and Kayah states, resistance forces regularly make incremental gains in rural areas and villages. Progress is slower in the center but still consistent in Ayeyarwady, Bago, Magway, Mandalay, Sagaing, and Tanintharyi.
But while the resistance coalition has captured much of the country’s periphery, it is facing greater challenges as the war moves into central Myanmar. Here, the junta’s forces are adopting a more defensive “porcupine strategy.” The Tatmadaw’s heavy artillery has hammered resistance formations, and its air force continues to use airstrikes to great effect. These capabilities are particularly valuable in slowing the resistance when it stops to besiege junta-held towns and cities.
As the war enters the historic Bamar heartland, the junta’s troops have shown a higher propensity to stand and fight during sieges, thus imposing serious losses on the resistance and dragging out the conflict. For instance, at Bhamo, the resistance’s Kachin Independence Army and allied People’s Defense Forces moved to surround the town in December 2024, but fighting has dragged on since, with junta airstrikes, artillery, and resupply by helicopter allowing its besieged forces to hold. The Kachin at Bhamo have made important gains, including capturing several junta bases, but the siege has slowed the overall offensive and bought the junta precious months in the north. If besieging towns like Bhamo, which has a population around 80,000, takes seven months and counting, then seizing Mandalay, with more than 1.5 million people, would be a far more daunting task.
The resistance has generally struggled to capture urban areas. In 2024, the Karen National Union and allies briefly seized most of the Thai-Myanmar border city of Myawaddy before the defection of a local militia led to its recapture by the military. Only now, in July 2025, are the Karen again encroaching on its outskirts. Karenni troops came close to taking all of Loikaw, the capital of Kayah State, but were driven back by junta counteroffensives in 2024. Late last year, the Ta’ang National Liberation Army and allied People’s Defense Forces threatened roads into Mandalay, Myanmar’s second-largest city. Now, however, a China-backed Tatmadaw counteroffensive against Nawnghkio Township in Shan state has put the Ta’ang National Liberation Army and its local allies on the defensive. They are close to losing Nawnghkio town itself.
Time is not necessarily a problem for an insurgency attempting to overthrow an unpopular government, but it is in Myanmar’s current context. In Syria, the opposition outlasted former President Bashar al-Assad’s international backers and allowed his regime to rot from within before sweeping to victory. However, while Myanmar’s resistance may have grown in capability and size over time, long sieges as the war moves into the heartland amplify a “closing window” problem.
The longer the war lasts, the more exhausted the population becomes. The resistance coalition itself could fracture under the pressure, especially given the junta’s brutal divide-and-conquer tactics. This means that, although they have stayed fairly united, resistance forces have a relatively narrow window of time to seize the state. So far, they have kept this window open, but things are changing with Beijing’s expanded involvement. Dragging out the conflict gives China an opportunity to play upon the resistance’s fragile unity and split the coalition in ways the junta cannot do, potentially handing the Tatmadaw a political victory in the war.
The Tatmadaw enjoys Moscow’s and Beijing’s economic and political support. Contrary to expectations that resistance battlefield success would lead China to pragmatically engage the anti-junta coalition, Beijing has recently doubled down on the Tatmadaw to prevent its fall. A May 9 meeting between Chinese President Xi Jinping and junta leader Min Aung Hlaing firmly demonstrated China’s pro-junta shift. Chinese and Russian assistance efforts include hundreds of millions of dollars’ worth of weaponry and equipment, particularly for the junta’s air force, diplomatic cover in international fora, additional financial support and new investments, the deployment of private security company assets, and, most importantly, China’s direct political involvement in negotiations with several rebel groups. Due to its influence in the country and over the Three Brotherhood Alliance, China’s role is more important than Russia’s.
Beijing’s pressure against the ethnic armed groups could be decisive for the junta, because it directly targets the resistance’s tenuous political unity. Questions about the future of federal governance and center-periphery relations have long driven Myanmar’s civil conflicts. Ethnic minorities distrust the Bamar majority, which some see as embodied by the National Unity Government. This has been a perennial challenge for the politically diverse Spring Revolution, along with other inter-ethnic tensions. For now, the resistance continues to fight together, including with greater battlefield integration. But a political framework beyond “eradicating the oppressive military dictatorship” remains out of reach. This leaves the resistance vulnerable to China’s divide-and-conquer approach.
Unlike the junta, which has tried but failed to cut deals with various active resistance actors, China has generally proved more adept with coercive diplomacy. This played out most clearly in the return of Lashio to junta control after its initial capture by resistance forces in August 2024. After the resistance offensives of late 2024 proved successful, China finally stepped in on the junta’s behalf and targeted the Myanmar National Democratic Alliance Army, which had taken the city. Beijing demanded cease-fire negotiations and deployed a range of coercive measures to force the group’s hand. China shut down border posts and trade, pressured its proxies to restrict black market small arms sales to resistance forces, and detained the Myanmar National Democratic Alliance Army’s leader when he visited China for cease-fire negotiations. This pressure led the alliance to cede Lashio city in return for the easing of restrictions. In essence, China has carrots and sticks the junta does not.
Other vulnerable groups along China’s border are still fighting the junta, but for how long remains to be seen. Beijing has demanded that the Ta’ang National Liberation Army surrender five recently captured towns, while China’s envoy to Myanmar has also reportedly pressured the Arakan Army and Kachin Independence Army to cease fighting. The longer the conflict drags on, the likelier China’s coercive pressure points bite as the resistance’s small arms supplies—which Beijing has leverage over—dry up and the trade shutdown hurts its finances.
Another crucial element in Beijing’s strategy to stabilize Myanmar under the junta’s rule is the “election” scheduled for late 2025 or early 2026. With China’s backing, Min Aung Hlaing has finally promised to carry out an election, which the Tatmadaw deferred for years. In all likelihood, the Union Solidarity and Development Party, which serves as the junta’s proxy, will “win” the majority of parliamentary seats through rigging and electoral bans. After this, Min Aung Hlaing will likely become president in a “civilian” government.
In the ideal election scenario for the Tatmadaw, this would divide the resistance into electoral participants (China is pressuring political parties to take part) and rejecters. This risks delegitimizing the National Unity Government, which continues to tie its legitimacy to the 2020 elections, and rehabilitate the regime with Myanmar’s neighbors in the Indo-Pacific, such as India, Thailand, and the rest of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations. If the junta and China prove successful, this could be a political tipping point in the war. Should the resistance coalition split apart under Chinese pressure and gradually become exhausted over time, the junta could consolidate control over its core territories and achieve victory. This would mean the attrition of the pro-democracy elements of the resistance in the center and the stabilization of the periphery through ceasefires and deal-making.
Despite its string of remarkable victories in 2023 and 2024, the resistance faces a time problem. The junta’s forces are likely to fight harder—or at least for longer—in sieges in central Myanmar than they have along the ethnic periphery. Meanwhile, China’s ramped-up support could dangerously divide the resistance. If China’s interventions peel off key ethnic armed groups and the junta’s election receives enough domestic and international acceptance, the National Unity Government and its remaining allies would likely begin to fall back.
Although the resistance has been remarkably successful since 2021, the war in Myanmar has entered a new phase in its fifth year. The resistance still has momentum and continues to gain territory. But time is not necessarily on its side, and sieges have proved particularly costly. The longer Beijing has, the more likely its direct involvement could carry the day for the Tatmadaw.