Who is financing Myanmar's civil war?

Business Daily

BBC

News, Business

4.4 • 796 Ratings

🗓️ 1 September 2025

⏱️ 19 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

We’re in Myanmar, a country that’s been ravaged by intense fighting for decades. But especially so since a military coup overthrew the elected government in 2021.

We’re asking who and what is paying for each side’s war effort, and the military hardware, in what’s becoming an increasingly high-tech war.

If you'd like to get in touch with Business Daily, our email address is [email protected]

Presented and produced by Ed Butler

(Picture: 3D printers are used to make parts of assault rifles produced in a clandestine weapon factory in Myanmar. Credit: Getty Images)

Transcript

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0:00.0	Hi there, I'm Ed Butler and welcome to Business Daily from the BBC World Service.
0:05.8	Today we're looking at Myanmar, a major Asian nation that's been reduced to chaos and economic hardship by years of conflict.
0:15.2	The military used drone, bomb, weapons they got from China and Russia.
0:20.5	So in the near future, this revolution starts... drone, bomb, weapons they got from China and Russia.
0:27.0	So in the near future, this revolution starts moving to anti-war.
0:29.2	You need money to fight now.
0:36.0	Today we're looking at how cash flows in this war-torn country are defining its political future and how some armed fractions are now using online scams,
0:40.6	torture and incarceration to subsidize the fighting.
0:44.9	Modern slavery is really the right term for this.
0:47.3	You know, their passports are getting taken away, them not being able to leave if they want to,
0:52.0	them being subject to horrible violence in the worst possible
0:55.2	ways.
0:56.4	Financing Myanmar's Civil War. That's Business Daily from the BBC.
1:03.2	rebel groups, like the people's defense Force, are constantly training up volunteers,
1:13.8	thousands of them, deep in the forest.
1:16.7	My name is Yi. I'm just a revolutionary girl.
1:22.6	I want to go back to Myanmar with freedom.
1:27.1	Until recently, Ii Inui was one of them.
1:30.6	She joined a rebel camp soon after the 2021 coup
1:33.6	when the military ousted Myanmar's democratically elected government.
1:38.6	I grew up in Mandalay.
1:41.2	I opened the small coffee shop
	...

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