With Myanmar’s now-former military chief Min Aung Hlaing having taken up the country’s presidency in civilian garb following a bogus election, this is an opportune moment to examine whether major projects under the China-Myanmar Economic Corridor (CMEC), the Myanmar component of the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), will now move to the construction phase. CMEC is an inverted Y-shaped infrastructure corridor running from the border of Yunnan in China to Myanmar’s coast on the Andaman Sea. Among its primary projects are the Kyaukpyhu Deep-Sea Port, the Muse-Kyaukphyu Railway, and New Yangon City, which, even before the military seized power in 2021, faced myriad challenges.

China-Myanmar Rapprochement and the CMEC

Over the past few years, China has solidified its support of Myanmar’s military administration. Although the military administration is far from an optimal partner for Beijing, China prefers the regime’s survival over its collapse. As a case in point, in late 2023, China gave its tacit support to Operation 1027, an offensive carried out by the Three Brotherhood Alliance of ethnic armed organizations (EAOs), chiefly due to the military’s inability to shut down scam centers located in northern and eastern Myanmar, which targeted Chinese citizens.

With the military having lost vast tracts of territory in Shan State, and China having secured most of its objectives in terms of scam operations, Beijing then sought to forestall a disorderly collapse of the military administration. This, it feared, would create a power and security vacuum that would bring even more uncertainty to Chinese interests, including CMEC. China pressured EAOs to halt offensives and brokered a January 2025 ceasefire between the military and the Myanmar National Democratic Alliance Army (MNDAA), one of the members of the Three Brotherhood Alliance. Later, in April 2025, China helped negotiate the MNDAA’s handover of the city of Lashio, the de facto capital of northern Shan State, back to military control.

While this brokering took place away from public view, there was a very public rapprochement between senior Chinese and Myanmar figures, which coincided with verbal pledges to reinvigorate CMEC. In November 2024, Min Aung Hlaing made his first visit to China since seizing power, attending a regional summit in Kunming. In May 2025, a first in-person meeting between President Xi Jinping and Min Aung Hlaing followed in Moscow. In mid-August 2025, the military administration established the BRI Leading Committee for Implementation, headed by Min Aung Hlaing. The timing was strategic, preceding his attendance at the Shanghai Cooperation Organization summit in Tianjin in late August and the Victory Day parade in Beijing in September. The Committee’s establishment gave tangibility to his pledges to Xi Jinping during these visits to accelerate CMEC cooperation.

China also gave the military’s bogus multi-phase elections a veneer of legitimacy by consistently voicing support for the polls and sending an official election observer delegation headed by Special Envoy Deng Xijun. Some analysts noted this as paving the way for CMEC implementation once a new “civilian” government was installed. In tandem, the military administration reiterated its desire to revive CMEC, stating that these megaprojects “must succeed” and criminalizing opposition to government-approved projects.

CMEC Chokepoints

One could surmise that Min Aung Hlaing is set to reward China for aiding his regime’s survival, while also benefiting from a much-needed economic boost by making the construction of CMEC projects a priority of his presidency. However, a number of factors cast doubt on expectations for near-term progress.

The most obvious is insecurity, as severe conflict continues in regions hosting CMEC projects. In Kyaukphyu, Rakhine State, where major construction work has yet to begin on the port spearheaded by China International Trust & Investment Corporation, the Arakan Army (AA) and Myanmar military have been locked in a high-pressure conflict since soon after the launch of Operation 1027

The AA, a member of the Three Brotherhood Alliance, is a powerful EAO: it has consolidated control over 14 of the 17 townships in Rakhine, leaving the military largely confined to the state capital Sittwe and Kyaukphyu. Analysts suggest that Beijing has accepted that the AA might capture Kyaukphyu. Meanwhile, in northern Myanmar, the 410-kilometer, $9 billion Muse-Mandalay segment of the Muse-Kyaukphyu Railway, which is being spearheaded by the China Eryuan Engineering Group, has been stuck in a “preparatory stage” for years. The railway would pass through areas of Shan State and the central dry zone, where EAOs and People’s Defence Force groups fight regularly with the Myanmar military. These groups have repeatedly said they will attack CMEC projects if construction begins under the military’s auspices.

Another factor that Myanmar and Chinese figures have not publicly addressed in recent years is the economic viability of CMEC projects, and the financial means by which they might be completed. China is not building CMEC through grants; project costs amounting to billions of dollars will be paid for through interest-bearing loans. It was previously reported that China Eximbank would finance 95 percent of the Kyaukphyu project through a loan, but in 2023, Min Aung Hlaing stated that the Myanmar side was seeking to renegotiate the agreement, with no further public updates made since. The port was originally to cost $7.3 billion; however, in 2018, the National League for Democracy-led government negotiated a scaled-back project to $1.3 billion. As major construction has not yet begun, and almost eight years have passed since the renegotiation, project costs will have increased due to inflation.

The financing arrangement for the Muse-Mandalay railway is unknown and likely unsettled. Reports in March 2024 stated that a committee had been formed to evaluate the project’s financial model and secure a low-interest loan from China, but no updates have been made publicly since. Moreover, the military administration has few means of seeking alternatives to Chinese financing, which might give it leverage to push down interest rates.

Previous governments sought to unbundle CMEC projects and seek financing from international institutions, such as the World Bank and the Asian Development Bank, to avoid unsustainable debt obligations to China. However, this is a highly unlikely scenario, even after the recent election. Domestic capital is also in no position to finance risky projects in the hundreds of millions, let alone billions, of dollars.

Given these conflict risks, potential change in the authority presiding over project areas, and unresolved negotiations on the financing model, it is hard to understand a viable business case that could deliver a financial return from these projects; likely, one does not yet exist. China will also be cautious about building risky projects after experiencing problems with high-profile BRI projects in Myanmar.

For instance, reports in February 2026 stated the China-backed $140 million VPower plant in Kyaukphyu was dismantled and relocated as clashes intensified nearby. The plant, which began operating in 2022 to supply the Kyaukphyu Special Economic Zone, was suspended in 2023 after the military administration failed to provide sufficient natural gas amid a shortage of dollars. A similar fate, in which insecurity and economic dysfunction render projects dormant, could befall CMEC as a whole, with the added constraint that ports and railways cannot be dismantled to recover value.

China’s Post-election CMEC Strategy

This raises the question: why does China continue to call for CMEC’s implementation? China’s grand strategy has not changed since the military takeover in 2021: despite rhetoric urging project implementation, China is willing to move at Myanmar’s pace rather than adopt a coercive approach. China and Myanmar are forever connected by a long shared border, and enhanced access to the Indian Ocean through the Muse-Kyaukphyu corridor remains a core strategic goal of Beijing. The Chinese government is also wary that retreating from its interests will leave a vacuum that adversaries India, Japan, and even the U.S. under Trump could fill. China continues to aspire for an outcome in which economic cooperation and development foster regional peace and stability, and vice versa – even if this outcome is decades away. In the interim, China continues to push Myanmar leaders to remain committed to CMEC, in order to maintain its strategic foothold in the country.

The military administration’s rhetoric of warm relations with China must also be viewed with caution. Military leaders, in addition to much of the Myanmar public, have not lost their historic paranoia of China as an aggressor state seeking economic subservience, while the military loathes China’s ability to supply EAO insurgencies and use them to punish and bring pressure to bear on the military administration for violating Chinese interests. Projects viewed as eroding sovereignty, particularly debt-heavy CMEC infrastructure, will likely stall amid quiet but deliberate foot-dragging by Naypyidaw. The outlook for CMEC is just as dour as it was before Min Aung Hlaing’s sham election.