Beijing – China- August 14, 2025 –
The complex and brutal conflict in Myanmar has taken on a new dimension, as China is reportedly exerting immense pressure on rebel forces to secure its supply of rare-earth minerals. This strategic maneuver by Beijing comes amidst a damning new report from a United Nations-mandated investigative body, which has uncovered significant evidence of systematic torture by Myanmar’s military authorities.
For years, Myanmar has served as a critical lifeline for China’s industrial and technological ambitions, providing a staggering 98% of China’s heavy rare-earth element imports in 2023. These minerals are essential components in everything from electric vehicles and wind turbines to precision weapons and smartphones, making their uninterrupted supply a paramount concern for Beijing. The stability of this supply chain has been severely tested since a successful offensive by rebel groups, most notably the Kachin Independence Army (KIA), captured key mining regions in northern Myanmar, effectively giving them control over a strategic resource that is vital to China’s economy.
The Kachin rebels, in a shrewd geopolitical move, initially halted rare-earth shipments to China in January 2025, causing a massive spike in global prices for elements like terbium. They have since imposed a heavy tax on Chinese mining operations, demanding that Beijing acknowledge their new authority and use its leverage to broker a more favorable political outcome in the conflict. China’s response has been a classic example of its pragmatic foreign policy. While officially allied with the military junta, Beijing has long cultivated relationships with ethnic armed groups like the KIA to protect its economic interests. Now, with the rebels in control, China has been forced to negotiate. According to multiple intelligence sources, Chinese officials have issued a series of ultimatums to the KIA, pressuring them to resume mining operations, cease military actions against the junta in key areas, and stabilize the supply chains.
This heavy-handed approach by China to secure its economic interests unfolds against a backdrop of escalating human rights abuses in Myanmar. A new annual report from the Independent Investigative Mechanism for Myanmar (IIMM), a UN-mandated body, has detailed “significant evidence” of systematic torture in detention facilities run by the military authorities. The report, which covers the period from July 2024 to June 2025, outlines a horrifying pattern of atrocities, including beatings, electric shocks, strangulation, gang rape, and the burning of sexual body parts. The IIMM has also gathered evidence identifying perpetrators, including high-level commanders, and has documented the summary execution of captured combatants and civilians.
The report also highlights the disturbing practice of the military detaining children as young as two years old as proxies for their parents, and subjecting some of them to torture and ill-treatment. According to Nicholas Koumjian, the head of the Mechanism, the “frequency and brutality” of these atrocities are continuing to escalate, a situation made worse by the unprecedented funding crisis that threatens the investigators’ ability to collect and analyze evidence. The UN has repeatedly condemned the military’s actions and its campaign of terror against its own population, which began after the 2021 military coup.
The juxtaposition of China’s economic pressure on the rebels and the military’s documented human rights violations creates a deeply troubling picture. While Beijing’s primary concern appears to be securing its supply of rare-earth minerals for its massive industrial machine, it is doing so in a country where the military is committing what the UN describes as heinous crimes. The Chinese pressure tactics have included restricting border access, which has caused shortages of fuel and medicine in rebel-controlled territories, thereby exacerbating the humanitarian crisis. This strategy, while effective in forcing the rebels to negotiate, has been condemned by human rights groups who argue it is a form of collective punishment against the civilian population.
The ongoing situation in Myanmar has also drawn the attention of other nations. India, a regional rival of China, has reportedly expressed interest in the heavy minerals and has sent officials to Kachin State, signaling a potential new front in the battle for control of these vital resources. Western nations, too, are scrambling to find countermeasures to China’s dominance of rare-earth supply chains, though progress remains slow. The crisis in Myanmar, therefore, is not just a local conflict but a key fault line in a global struggle for control over the raw materials that will power the technologies of the future. The fate of the rare-earth supply chain is now inextricably linked to the outcome of a brutal civil war and the humanitarian catastrophe it has created.
