In the last forty eight hours, reports from Myanmar’s Rakhine State have once again put the town of Kyaukphyu in the headlines. Local outlets describe thousands of civilians fleeing fresh clashes between the Myanmar military and the Arakan Army in Kyaukphyu Township, with airstrikes, artillery and ground assaults pushing people out of at least seventeen villages.
Just days earlier, other reports spoke of junta columns suffering heavy losses in ambushes near Kyaukphyu as the Arakan Army continues its offensive. The fighting is not happening in some random rural expanse. It is taking place around a district that hosts one of China’s most important overseas projects.
Kyaukphyu is home to a Chinese owned oil and gas pipeline terminal, a planned deep sea port, and a special economic zone that anchors the China Myanmar Economic Corridor. The recent surge in violence is turning that strategic geography into a war zone.
Why Kyaukphyu matters so much to Beijing
Kyaukphyu is not just another foreign port in a long list of Belt and Road projects. It is the maritime end of a corridor that runs from the Bay of Bengal to Yunnan. Oil and gas from the Middle East and Africa can be offloaded at Kyaukphyu, pumped across Myanmar, and delivered to China without passing through the Malacca Strait.
For Beijing, that solves three problems at once.
- It reduces dependence on a chokepoint dominated by the United States Navy
- It brings China closer to energy sources in the Indian Ocean
- It creates a logistics and influence hub in a region that borders India’s eastern seaboard
This is why the Myanmar junta has reinforced Kyaukphyu repeatedly, and why a committee was recently formed to accelerate Chinese linked projects, with special attention to the deep sea port.
In simple language, the Chinese state and Chinese companies need Kyaukphyu to work. The Myanmar military needs Chinese money. That combination means the port and the pipelines will be defended fiercely, whatever the local cost.
A strategic corridor running through a battlefield
The problem is that the corridor now runs through an active battlefield. The Arakan Army has used the war to strengthen its own control over territory in Rakhine, and its pressure on Kyaukphyu has drawn regional and international attention, particularly from China and India.
Airstrikes, naval shelling and drone attacks in and around the district have already displaced tens of thousands this year. Civilian casualties and damage to local infrastructure are mounting.
There are three obvious risks for China.
- Physical risk to pipelines, terminals and port infrastructure
- Political risk that a future authority in Rakhine might seek to renegotiate or reframe Chinese projects
- Reputation risk as local communities associate displacement and militarisation with Chinese backed developments
So far, Beijing has tried to play both sides. It keeps formal ties with the junta, while also signalling to local actors that Chinese investments are not going away and that everyone must live with them. But the harder the fighting becomes, the more difficult that balancing act will be.
How This Looks from New Delhi
India watches Kyaukphyu from two vantage points. First, as a neighbour whose own security environment is directly affected by instability in Myanmar. Second, as a strategic player in the Bay of Bengal that cannot ignore a Chinese backed corridor that delivers oil and gas to the Yunnan heartland and possibly opens the door for future naval activity near critical Indian sea lanes.
Indian analysts have already flagged the pattern. A combination of ports, special zones, possible dual use facilities, and political leverage across the northern Indian Ocean region. Djibouti, Gwadar, Hambantota, possible facilities in Cambodia, and projects in Bangladesh and Myanmar fit into that wider picture.
Kyaukphyu is unique because it sits almost directly opposite India’s eastern shoreline and not too far from the Andaman and Nicobar Islands, where India operates a tri service command that guards the approaches to the Malacca Strait. If China eventually gains access rights for naval vessels or establishes a permanent security footprint around Kyaukphyu, the balance in the Bay of Bengal will tilt.
Even without formal Chinese warships at the pier, a heavily fortified Chinese connected infrastructure cluster so close to Indian waters poses long term intelligence and influence problems.
India’s options in a fractured Myanmar
New Delhi’s Myanmar policy has always been a difficult balancing act.
- India has invested in its own connectivity projects, such as the Kaladan Multi Modal Transit Transport Project, to reach the Northeast through Myanmar
- It has maintained working relations with the junta while keeping an eye on ethnic armed groups along the border
- It wants to prevent Chinese dominance in Myanmar, but does not have the appetite for overt intervention
The escalation around Kyaukphyu and the open discussion in foreign analysis about Chinese plans bearing fruit in Myanmar’s conflict ridden landscape bring these dilemmas into sharper focus.
Realistically, India has four levers.
- Maritime posture
Strengthen naval presence and surveillance in the Bay of Bengal and around the Andamans, to ensure that any future military use of Kyaukphyu is detected and deterred early. - Selective engagement with all sides
Increase diplomatic contact not just with the junta, but also with groups that may have influence in Rakhine, while keeping the focus on stability and protection of infrastructure that matters to India. - Competing connectivity
Accelerate Indian backed infrastructure so that landlocked parts of the Northeast and partner countries have alternatives to Chinese corridors through Myanmar. - Quiet coordination with like minded partners
Work with Japan, ASEAN states and others who also have reservations about uncritical expansion of Chinese influence in the eastern Indian Ocean littoral.
A war that is larger than Myanmar
What is unfolding around Kyaukphyu is part of Myanmar’s brutal civil war. But for India, it is also part of a different contest. It is about who will shape the strategic architecture of the Bay of Bengal and who will control the key corridors that link this ocean to the interior of Asia.
As fresh reports of airstrikes, displacement and ambushes keep coming in this week, one fact is unavoidable. China’s path to the Indian Ocean runs through a place that is now on fire.
