Myanmar Spring Chronicle – September 2 Highlights
(MoeMaKa, September 3, 2025)
The SCO Summit: Global Ripples That May Also Affect Myanmar
This week, the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) meeting in Tianjin, China has sparked speculation that, amid today’s armed conflicts and trade wars, it could catalyze new alignments among major powers and potentially shift the global balance.
As host, China has brought together countries whose weight matters in one dimension or another—Russia, India, Indonesia, etc.—in economics, military power, population, or geopolitics. This makes the gathering one that Western countries will watch closely. Russia straddles Asia and Europe; China now stands second only to the U.S. in economic and military strength; and India is rising toward major-power status. Ahead of the summit, the U.S. announcement of a 50% tariff on India over its purchases of Russian oil appeared to push the world’s most populous democracy closer to Russia and China. American tariff moves and unilateral decisions may, despite India–China border disputes, nudge Beijing and New Delhi toward setting those disputes aside in order to stand back-to-back against U.S. economic dominance.
It would be inaccurate to label all SCO attendees “authoritarian.” While China, Russia—and Myanmar’s coup regime—fit that description, India and Indonesia are also in the room.
If this summit helps birth new alliances that fit the economic, military, and security shifts of 2025, that would not be surprising. Earlier this year, under President Trump, Washington pressed NATO allies to shoulder more defense costs and imposed unexpected tariff rates, along with other policy reversals. Moves like these are driving major powers to form new groupings, and within that motion, Myanmar’s coup leader may see diplomatic, military, and economic openings.
SCO attendance gave junta chief Min Aung Hlaing opportunities to meet China’s president, India’s prime minister, and Russia’s president—with an evident goal: to win recognition for the junta and for the elections planned at year’s end. Reported remarks by India’s prime minister about recognizing the election would be a windfall for the junta, while China—long supportive of the “election track”—reaffirmed its stance and signaled a continued readiness to pressure ethnic armed groups along its border. In short, given Myanmar’s geopolitical position between China and India, it appears increasingly likely that these two powerful neighbors may recognize and further support the junta’s election plan.
For the resistance, this landscape demands reassessment. The global geopolitical turn, shifting grand strategies, and evolving alliances must be factored into calculations, and the Spring Revolution’s political and military strategies must be re-drawn accordingly.