In the remote regions of northern Myanmar, an ominous story of exploitation and environmental destruction is unfolding. China’s aggressive pursuit of natural resources is leaving a trail of devastation, enabled by the military junta’s complicity.
At the heart of this crisis is Kachin State’s Special Region 1, a resource-rich area that has been a battleground for decades between Myanmar’s military and ethnic armed groups vying for control over its lucrative jade, gold, and rare earth deposits. Rather than safeguarding this national treasure for its people, Myanmar’s generals have forged a Faustian bargain with China, ceding effective control to the regional heavyweight.
Today, a staggering 95% of mining operations in Myanmar are operated by Chinese entities in collusion with the military regime. This incursion has transformed northern Myanmar into a virtual extension of China, stripping the region of its wealth while the junta lines its pockets.
The pillaging of Myanmar’s jade epitomizes this plunder. Revered in Chinese culture for its spiritual properties, jade from Kachin State’s famed Phakant mines has become a prized commodity. With superior technology and machinery, Chinese mining firms have strong-armed the military into granting them broad access, cementing an extractive alliance that has generated immense profits – for China and the generals.
But the human cost has been catastrophic. The military’s territorial expansions and permanent presence in resource-rich areas like Phakant have displaced indigenous Kachin communities, stoking ethnic tensions. Mining has devastated the environment, poisoning water sources and denuding once-verdant landscapes. China’s overreach extends far beyond jade. It is aggressively pursuing rare earth mining projects, despite concerns over environmental damage and social unrest. In Moe Nyin Township and Inn Daw Gyi village, Chinese firms have descended with mining proposals, dangling the promise of jobs while dispossessing locals of their land.
In Hpare village, protests against Chinese rare earth mining backed by the Kachin Independence Army (KIA) erupted into violence, underscoring the inter-communal friction these projects catalyze. Elsewhere, militia groups aligned with the junta like the Border Guard Forces control rare earth mining hubs like Chipwii, consolidating power and profits. The Kachin region’s once-thriving banana cultivation is being abandoned as extractive industries offer higher returns for Myanmar’s military cronies – human sustenance be damned. Synthetic drugs manufactured by Chinese cartels compound the social toll, flooding impoverished areas.
While China tightens its grip, ordinary people suffer indignities like land confiscation and environmental ruin. In this modern Age of Plunder, Myanmar’s natural inheritance is being stripped away with cold pragmatism – its very sovereignty mortgaged to feed China’s ravenous resource appetite. The junta’s deepening entwinement with China amid domestic turmoil follows a well-trodden path of authoritarians ceding prized assets to remain in power. But even by such sordid standards, the comprehensive looting underway in Myanmar’s borderlands represents an ethical nadir.
Beyond its scarring human impact, this reckless ransacking of finite resources sets a perilous precedent of self-annihilation to sustain a rapacious neighbor’s growth. In sacrificing the long-term viability of its lands and people, Myanmar’s rulers reveal a callous disregard for the nation’s future – and their own legitimacy. For China, Myanmar is but one outpost in its global quest to secure resources, by foul means or fairer. From the South China Sea to the mines of Africa, Beijing has demonstrated an insatiable hunger that threatens developing nations’ sovereignty and sustainable development.
China’s exploitative resource grab extends far beyond Myanmar to a disturbing pattern of neo-colonial extraction across the developing world.
From mineral-rich African nations to small Pacific islands, Beijing has replicated this toxic script of funneling lucrative mining concessions to Chinese firms through opaque deals with pliant regimes. In places like Zambia, Chinese mining interests have run roughshod over local communities, fueling social unrest and environmental degradation. The Democratic Republic of Congo’s vast mineral wealth has attracted an influx of Chinese corporations accused of human rights abuses and corrupt ties to ruling kleptocrats. Even harbors and cities across the Indian Ocean have been slowly enveloped in China’s strategic infrastructure initiative, leaving smaller nations indebted to Beijing on punitive terms.
Wherever countries possess coveted resources, China’s state capitalist juggernauts have secured footholds by cultivating authoritarian patrons – human rights, sovereignty and sustainable development be damned. This global resource hegemony has become a defining hallmark of China’s pursuit of superpower status at the expense of the global south’s dignity and future.
