Thailand and China could launch joint operations or even partition the country because at that point Myanmar existance is a liability. The country is completly fucked regardless and has been since independence. Even if the Junta is gone the war would not end because the Ethnic groups are pretty much tearing the country apart and letting this happen. Kachins, Shans and Bamars are killing each other while across in Yunnan they live side by side.
Myanmar/Burma civil conflict
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Gaza first.
Nation-building is expensive, slow, and not at all guaranteed to succeed. None of Myanmar's neighbors want to take on such a huge burden. The path of least resistance is to let them sort out their own problems while trying to contain whatever fallout spills over the borders.
True but compared to US/Soviet in Afghanistan China would be a better position due to linguestic and cultural ties aswell shared ethnic groups who can defintly play a role in the outcome of Nation Building. Plus if Thailand is involved in Shan state this would remove some pressure of China due to Shan people being Tai which is part of the greater Tai nation (Includes Thai and Lao)
The small benefits simply don't justify the very large costs. Even just talking about SEA, there are far better regional objectives on which to spend finite resources.
antiterror13
Brigadier
If China had a concession to have access to Andaman sea, it would be worth it, but I doubt it, too far away
What would happen (BIG if) if Myanmar had decided to be part of China as another autonomous region ? ... hahahh, sorry a big hypothetical scenario
Yes, the problem with Myanmar is that the most strategically valuable parts are also the farthest away. Chinese influence is strong in the border regions, but much weaker along the coast. Instead of direct control, the better approach is to leverage influence with whatever government controls the coast. Which is what they are doing right now, of course.
Myanmar is too big and too populated to be absorbed like that. It would need to be conquered, which brings us back to square one. The juice is not worth the squeeze.
antiterror13
Brigadier
I agreed. with 135 ethnic groups, will be very hard to make everybody happy. Population and area size are big but not too big for China to handle. Population size is about the same as Yunnan ~50M ppl but about 50% more area than Yunnan. But Yunnan is about 9X richer than Myanmar
Probably the best for those people of Myanmar were part of China as an autonomous region, like Tibet, Inner Mongolia or Xinjiang
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And ironically while Bamars, Lisu, Jingpo and Shans (Dai) kill each other in Myanmar, in Yunnan they live side by side peacefully. However Jingpo and Lisu in Yunnan are majority buddhist or Native Belief rather than chrisitan in myanmar which may play a role.
Yunnan is still poor as hell and that's after all the money from the central government. Imagine the black hole of investment that Myanmar would be, on top of dealing with the unhappy locals. Development costs, education costs, infrastructure costs, security costs, all the costs would be through the roof. And for what, a port or two on the Indian Ocean? Terrible idea through and through.