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In a busy Lagos food market, a customer points at an enamel bowl filled with rice. “How much for a derica?” she asks.

Salesman Christopher Onyekwere scoops grains into a tin can and holds it up, listing the prices for local and imported rice.

Heavy use has worn the text off the tin can that once contained 400 grammes of tomato paste. The branding on most of the tin cans used to measure rice, melon seeds and black-eyed beans at Lagos’s Idi Alba market is equally illegible.

Derica is a unit of measurement found in markets all over Lagos, as well as in some cities in the south, like Port Harcourt, and the east, like Enugu. But where does the name come from? Twenty-one-year-old Onyekwere shrugs. “I have no idea.”

An older trader on the next street responds to the question with a smile.

“How old was the salesman you spoke to? You must have asked the wrong person. Too young to remember how popular De Rica tomato paste was,” says 49-year-old Henry Njoku.

Ubiquitous tin can

When Njoku moved west from Imo State to Lagos as a teenager in the 1980s to set up his food shop, vendors were already using derica as a measurement.

But the De Rica brand was once so widespread in southern Nigeria, he says, that it was used simply to mean tomato paste, whatever the brand.

Nigerian food writer Yemisi Aribisala remembers her grandparents using it when she was growing up in the 1970s and 80s. “De Rica was everywhere. At that time, everyone considered it the best tinned tomato,” she says.

As the tin cans were so ubiquitous, food vendors started to use the empty cans to measure food, each scoop being a “derica”. “We recycle so much, it makes sense those tins became a unit of measurement,” Aribisala adds.

There are also other units of measurement based on well-known products. Blue Band margarine tubs are used to measure a “butter”, while the smaller “cigarette cup” is measured by tins that once contained 50 cigarettes.

In Longthroat Memoirs, her 2017 collection of essays on Nigerian cuisine, Aribisala laments the challenges of trying to translate cigarette cups and dericas into the ounces and pounds of a cookbook. But she understands why the market vendors prefer to use them: “Good scales are expensive, and empty tins are free.”

Any can will do

Although the name “derica” is used, market vendors these days use cans with different brand names to measure this unit, says Njoku. At his Idi Araba stall, he points at the tins resting on the mounds of dry goods. “None of them are De Rica. We don’t find De Rica tins at this market any more.”

In 2017, the Nigerian federal government banned the import of tomato products to stimulate local tomato production. Because of the high cost of setting up a tin production line, which would raise consumer prices, locally produced paste, including De Rica, started mostly being sold in plastic packets, leading to the disappearance of the iconic cans.

“Goment don ban am [The government banned it],” explains Agatha Okonkwo in Pidgin.

De Rica was once the leading tomato paste brand, according to Okonkwo, the owner of AO Stores at the wholesale Mushin market, where all kinds of products, from Maggi cubes to dried crayfish, are sold.

“There was a time Nigerians said De Rica when they meant tomato paste,” she says. She’d rather not mention her age, but she remembers her mother cooking stew with De Rica in the 1960s. “Everybody used it. That time has passed.”

De Rica has its origins in a tomato processing factory that began operating in 1912 with 20 workers in the countryside of northern Italy’s Emilia-Romagna region. It is unclear when the brand first made its way to Nigeria, but Nigerian consumers, like Okonkwo, trace their first memories of it as far back as the 1960s.

The saleswoman shows row after row of cardboard boxes filled with 60gm sachets containing different brands of tomato paste. Only one carton holds De Rica. The others are mostly Sonia – “the cheapest” – and Gino – “the most popular” and similar in price to De Rica. Even before the government ban, De Rica was no longer the leading brand. “Competition is too much,” she explains.

“This is the only way you’ll find De Rica tomato paste today,” says Okonkwo, who has not seen the canned product for more than five years.

Brand loyalty

Today, some still swear by De Rica.

Victor Moses, a 31-year-old sous chef in Abuja’s upscale Wells Carlton Hotel, is famous for his smoky jollof rice. His secret for preparing the West African dish is letting the rice burn a bit before adding water. The other is using De Rica to bring out the smoky flavour of his dish, giving it “a rich taste like mustard gets”, he says. “And it also gives the rice a good red colour.”

Now the brand’s popularity has catapulted back to Europe, as Nigerians in the diaspora seek it out. “Nigerians are brand conscious,” explains Tim Szejnoga, an account manager for Dutch import company Unidex. “They will remain loyal to one brand their entire lives.”

The 400gm tin cans may no longer be available in Nigeria, but they live on in Lagos’s markets every time a seller measures out a derica.

This article is part of “Ordinary items, extraordinary stories”, a series about the surprising stories behind well-known items. 

Read more from the series:

How the inventor of the bouncy castle saved lives

How a popular Peruvian soft drink went ‘toe-to-toe’ with Coca-Cola

How a drowning victim became a lifesaving icon

New Delhi, India – The Indian government tabled a new bill earlier this week in parliament under which a prime minister, state chief minister or other federal or state minister can be removed from office if they are facing criminal investigations – even before they are convicted.

The draft law proposed by Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) mandates the automatic removal of elected officials if they are detained for 30 consecutive days on charges carrying a minimum sentence of five years.

Even as Amit Shah, India’s home minister who is widely seen as Modi’s deputy, presented the bill in parliament, members of the opposition ripped apart legislative papers and hurled them at Shah, before the house was suspended amid chaos.

The opposition, strengthened in the 2024 national election in which the BJP lost its majority and was forced to turn to smaller allies to stay in power, has slammed the bill as an example of “undemocratic” weaponising of laws against dissent.

Meanwhile, the Indian government says the proposed law will rein in corrupt and criminal public representatives.

So, is the proposed law authoritarian or democratic? What’s behind the opposition’s allegations against the Modi government? Or, as some experts argue, is it all a trap?

What’s the bill proposing?

The Modi government tabled the Constitution (One Hundred and Thirtieth Amendment) Bill, 2025, in parliament on Wednesday.

As per the amendment, an elected leader would automatically lose their post if they are arrested and detained for 30 consecutive days on charges carrying a minimum sentence of five years.

The bill also includes a provision for reappointment, allowing leaders to return to their posts if they secure bail or are acquitted.

The government argues that the measure is a step towards reinforcing accountability and public trust, arguing that those facing serious criminal charges should not continue in constitutional office.

The amendment has been referred to a joint parliamentary committee – a panel consisting of legislators from both the government and opposition parties – for its deliberations, following opposition protests.

What’s the opposition saying?

Opposition leaders have alleged that the proposed amendment could be misused by the Modi government against critics and political rivals.

That risk, they say, is especially high since law enforcement agencies that come under the federal government only need to arrest and press serious charges against opposition members, and keep them in custody for 30 days – without worrying about actually proving those charges in a court of law.

Manish Tewari, MP from the opposition Congress party, said that “the bill is against the principle of presumption of innocence” until proven guilty.

Asaduddin Owaisi, another opposition MP from Hyderabad city in southern India, said this law would be used to topple adversarial state governments.

Critics have also pointed to how, under India’s constitution, state governments have the primary responsibility for maintaining law and order. The proposed law, they say, upends that principle.

Applying this law to state leaders undermines India’s federal structure, he said, noting that this weakens the people’s right to choose governments.

“The bill would change the federal contract in fundamental ways, including balance of power between centre and states, giving the centre enormous leverage to sabotage elected governments – and, of course, to the space for oppositional politics,” said Asim Ali, a political observer based in New Delhi.

Are the opposition’s allegations founded?

Since 2014, when Modi came to power in New Delhi, the opposition has alleged that the government has increasingly used agencies like the Enforcement Directorate (ED), tasked with fighting financial crimes, and the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI), the country’s premier investigative body, to target rival politicians.

In March 2023, opposition parties petitioned in India’s top court against “a clear pattern of using investigative agencies … to target, debilitate and in fact crush the entire political opposition and other vocal citizens”.

The petition noted that since 2014, 95 percent of cases taken up by the CBI and the ED have been against politicians from the opposition. That’s a 60 percentage point and 54 percentage point rise, respectively, from the days of the previous Congress-led government.

In parliament, 46 percent of current members face criminal cases, with 31 percent of them charged with serious crimes like murder, attempt to murder, kidnapping and crimes against women.

In the run-up to the 2024 general election, investigative agencies had arrested multiple opposition leaders, including Delhi’s Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal and his deputy, Manish Sisodia. The ED also arrested Hemant Soren, just hours after he resigned as the chief minister of the eastern state of Jharkhand, on accusations of corruption.

In the last 12 years of BJP rule in India, at least 12 sitting opposition ministers have been detained and jailed for more than 30 days  – nine of them from Delhi and the eastern state of West Bengal.

Is this a distraction?

Some political observers and the Modi government’s critics say yes.

A constitutional amendment in India requires a two-thirds majority in both houses of the parliament, which the BJP and its allies lack.

Modi’s government currently survives with the support of the BJP’s alliance partners, after it fell short of a majority in the 2024 national election.

In recent weeks, the Modi government has faced mounting opposition criticism over a controversial revision of electoral rolls ahead of a crucial state election, allegations of vote theft, and heat over foreign policy challenges as India battles 50 percent tariffs from the United States under President Donald Trump.

It is against that backdrop that the bill – which Ali, the political observer, described as “authoritarian” yet “symbolic” in nature – is significant, say experts.

“Even if the bill does not become a law, it will anyway force a showdown to make opposition parties vote against the bill,” Ali said, “so that they can use that as ammunition against them in [election] campaigning.”

Since floating the bill, Modi, his government and the BJP have been accusing critics of being sympathetic to criminals in politics.

On Friday, speaking at a rally in election-bound Bihar state, Modi referred to Kejriwal’s refusal for months after his arrest on money laundering charges to quit from the Delhi chief minister’s post.

“Some time ago, we saw how files were being signed from jail and how government orders were given from jail. If leaders have such an attitude, how can we fight corruption?” Modi said.

Rasheed Kidwai, a political analyst, said that while the bill is draconian and could be misused, Modi’s party, for now, thinks it can help them consolidate urban, middle-class votes for the upcoming election in Bihar.

New Delhi, India – Five years ago, United States President Donald Trump was being welcomed in India, and China condemned.

In February 2020, Trump addressed a massive rally titled “Namaste Trump!” in Ahmedabad, on his first visit to India as US president, as bilateral ties and trade soared, and the American leader’s personal bonhomie with Prime Minister Narendra Modi was on public display.

By June that year, relations with China, on the other hand, came crashing down: 20 Indian soldiers were killed in clashes with Chinese troops in Galwan Valley in the Ladakh region. India banned more than 200 Chinese apps, including TikTok, and Indian and Chinese troops lined up along their disputed border in an eyeball-to-eyeball standoff. New Delhi also expanded defence and strategic cooperation with the US and the Quad grouping, officially the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue, which also includes Japan and Australia.

As recently as May this year, India treated China as its primary adversary, after Pakistan used Chinese defence systems during its four-day war with India after a deadly attack in Indian-administered Kashmir.

But Trump’s tariff wars, especially against India – which has been slapped with a 50 percent duty on its imports – and rapid geopolitical shifts have led to a thaw in New Delhi’s relations with Beijing.

The White House under Trump, meanwhile, political analysts say, is undoing decades of diplomatic and strategic gains foundational to its influence in Asia, home to more than 60 percent of the world’s population.

“Dragon-Elephant tango”

Earlier this week, Prime Minister Modi sat down with China’s top diplomat, Foreign Minister Wang Yi, as he hailed “respect for each other’s interests and sensitiveness” and “steady progress” in bilateral relations.

On his two-day visit to New Delhi, Wang also met with Indian Foreign Minister S Jaishankar and National Security Adviser Ajit Doval to discuss the countries’ disputed border in the Himalayan mountains.

China’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs said the countries have entered a “steady development track” and should “trust and support” each other. In their meetings, both sides announced confidence-building measures: resumption of direct flights, easier visa processes and border trade facilitation. In June, Beijing allowed pilgrims from India to visit holy sites in Tibet. The two countries also agreed to explore an “early harvest” settlement of parts of their long, contested border, which is the biggest source of historical tensions between them, including a war they fought in 1962.

Modi also formally accepted an invitation from Chinese President Xi Jinping to attend the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation summit in Tianjin – a regional grouping led by China and Russia that many analysts view as aimed at countering US influence in Asia – scheduled for late this month. It will be Modi’s first visit to China in more than seven years.

“The setbacks we experienced in the past few years were not in the interest of the people of our two countries. We are heartened to see the stability that is now restored in the borders,” Wang said Monday, referring to the Galwan clashes, in which four Chinese soldiers were killed as well.

Earlier this year, President Xi called for Sino-Indian ties to take the form of a “Dragon-Elephant tango” – a reference to the animals often seen as emblems of the two Asian giants.

Sana Hashmi, a fellow at the Taiwan-Asia Exchange Foundation, told Al Jazeera that the efforts to minimise tensions and differences between India and China have been under way for some time.

Last October, Modi and Xi broke the ice with a meeting in Kazan, Russia, after avoiding each other for years, even at multilateral forums.

“However, Trump’s policies on tariffs and [favourable approach towards New Delhi’s rival] Pakistan have left India with little choice but to reduce the number of adversaries, including China,” she said.

The US has twice hosted Pakistan’s army chief, Asim Munir, this year, including for an unprecedented White House meeting with Trump. The US president has also repeatedly claimed that he brokered the ceasefire that ended the fighting between India and Pakistan in May, despite New Delhi denying that Washington played a mediator.

“For Beijing, the outreach [towards India] appears largely tactical, while for New Delhi, it stems more from uncertainty and the shifting geopolitical landscape,” Hashmi said.

While there are no visible signs that Trump is seeking to isolate China, Hashmi said the White House “is certainly trying to isolate a key strategic partner, India.”

Trump has imposed an additional 25 percent tariff – on top of another 25 percent – on India’s goods, citing its continued imports of Russian oil. He has not imposed such tariffs against China, the largest buyer of Russian crude.

Biswajit Dhar, a trade economist, said that the Trump tariffs are causing a realignment in Asia. “The pace of improvement [in India-China relations] has certainly hastened over the past few months,” he said.

“There seems to be a genuine shift in the relations,” he added, “which is here to stay.”

Asian trade bloc?

Political and economic experts also noted that if India-China ties were to get warmer, that could soften the blow of US tariffs for both.

With Washington raising barriers on key Indian exports, access to Chinese markets, smoother cross-border trade and collaborative supply chain networks would help New Delhi reduce its reliance on the US market.

In 2024-25, India recorded a trade deficit of $99.2bn with China, backed by a surge in imports of electronic goods. Beijing is India’s largest trading partner after the US – yet, India’s trade deficit with China is roughly double that with the US.

China is attempting to woo India and has indicated that it will provide greater market access for Indian goods, said Hashmi, of the Taiwan-Asia Exchange Foundation. “This could offer India some relief from Trump’s tariffs and mitigate the impact of strategic and economic vulnerabilities and also help reduce the significant trade imbalance India currently has with China,” she said.

For China, winning India over would also be a major strategic gain for its influence in the Asia Pacific, Hashmi said. “New Delhi has been a key pillar of the US-led Indo-Pacific strategy, so closer ties with India would allow China to demonstrate that it, rather than the US, is a reliable economic and security partner,” she added.

Both in India and China, there is a realisation that they have lost too much geostrategically due to their tense relationship, said Ivan Lidarev, a visiting research fellow at the National University of Singapore’s Institute of South Asian Studies, specialising in India-China relations.

“China realised that it has pushed India way too close to the US, and New Delhi realises that its close relations with the US now cost it to a great extent,” he said.

“The China-India rapprochement creates greater space for Asia-led trade blocs that are independent from Washington,” Lidarev said, adding that there could be an increase in the bilateral trade between India and China.

However, Hashmi pointed to limitations that she suggested were in-built into how closely India and China could cooperate. India, like several other countries, has been trying to derisk its supply chains by reducing overdependence on any one source. That, she said, “is proving ineffective without a strong response to the growing dependence on China”. And for India, “this challenge has only deepened with the new US tariffs”.

“A thaw in relations may help normalise bilateral ties, but it is unlikely to transform them, as competition and conflict will persist,” she told Al Jazeera. “[And the] global trade dependence on China will continue, as countries rush to normalise economic relations with Beijing amid Trump’s tariffs.”

Quad, minus the edge

Since the George W Bush presidency, India has been framed in Washington as a democratic counterweight to China. Barack Obama’s “pivot to Asia” gave New Delhi a central role in balancing Beijing’s rise – that only grew sharper with the creation of the Quad, which includes the US and India alongside Japan and Australia.

For the US, the Quad became a centrepiece of its Asia Pacific strategy, steering billions of dollars into Asia Pacific infrastructure, supply chain resilience and critical technologies. Experts noted that the Quad allowed the US to project influence without relying solely on formal alliances, while still embedding New Delhi in a cooperative security and economic framework.

Since the Cold War era, New Delhi has pursued a foreign policy premised on strategic autonomy – it will partner with different countries on specific issues, but will not join any military alliance and will not ideologically position itself in a bloc against other major powers.

Still, in Washington, the underlying assumption was that closer US-India ties, coupled with historical distrust between New Delhi and Beijing, would turn India into a critical pillar against China. To keep India on board, successive US administrations steered clear of pressuring New Delhi too much over its traditional friendship with Moscow, a major weapons supplier to the South Asian nation over the past half-century. That policy continued during Russia’s war on Ukraine, and the US, in fact, encouraged India to buy Russian oil that Western nations were boycotting, to keep global crude prices under check.

Now, Trump is upending that equation and wants India to formally pick a side.

Referring to India’s foreign policy, White House Counsellor for Trade and Manufacturing Peter Navarro wrote in the Financial Times on August 18, “The Biden administration largely looked the other way at this strategic and geopolitical madness. The Trump administration is confronting it … If India wants to be treated as a strategic partner of the US, it needs to start acting like one.”

Indian officials, meanwhile, have signalled that New Delhi will not give up on its “strategic autonomy”.

Warming India-China ties would complicate US efforts to isolate China in global institutions, said BR Deepak, professor of Chinese studies at the Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU), New Delhi.

“If New Delhi were to align more closely with Beijing on issues like development financing, multilateral reform, de-dollarisation, or climate change, it would undercut Washington’s narrative of rallying democracies against China,” Deepak told Al Jazeera, adding that it lends legitimacy to Beijing’s push for an alternative global order.

Deepak said that a friendlier Beijing-Delhi line might temper India’s appetite for overtly anti-China positioning within the Quad, nudging the grouping towards a broader agenda of providing public goods in the Asia Pacific rather than functioning as a blunt counter-China bloc.

Lidarev, of the National University of Singapore, said that the India-China rapprochement will create “complications within the Quad that will undermine the mutual trust within the grouping and the sense of purpose”.

Still, Deepak said, the Quad’s “strategic relevance” will remain intact, especially over “shared goals such as resilient supply chains, emerging technologies, climate cooperation and maritime security”.

Hashmi pointed out that Trump had focused heavily on strengthening the Quad in his first term – but was now undermining its cohesion.

Rakhine State stands at a pivotal moment as the Arakan Army (AA) edges closer to seizing control of Myanmar’s strategic western frontier region, a shift in power that could redefine both the country’s civil war and regional geopolitics.

While Myanmar’s military government has clawed back territory elsewhere in the country, the AA now controls 14 of 17 townships in Rakhine, which is situated on the Bay of Bengal in the country’s west and shares a border with Bangladesh.

Flush from victories against Myanmar’s military rulers, the rebel group has pledged to capture the remainder of Rakhine State, including the capital Sittwe, as well as a key Indian port project, and Kyaukphyu, home to oil and gas pipelines and a deep-sea port central to China’s Belt and Road Initiative.

Analysts say the window is open for a decisive offensive by the rebel group.

But the AA’s fight against Myanmar’s military government for self-determination unfolds amid a deepening humanitarian crisis and growing reports of serious abuses by the armed group against Muslim-majority Rohingya in Rakhine.

The Myanmar military’s blockade of supplies to Rakhine – historically known as Arakan – has worsened a crisis in which the United Nations estimates more than two million people face the risk of starvation. Earlier this month, the World Food Programme warned that 57 percent of families in central Rakhine cannot meet basic food needs – up from 33 percent in December.

Thousands of civilians are hemmed in the encircled Sittwe, which is now accessible only by sea and air.

Residents describe skyrocketing prices – pork that once cost $2 now exceeds $13. Local media have reported on desperate people taking their own lives, families turning to begging, sex work increasing, and daytime thefts as law and order collapses.

One resident who recently left by plane told of the growing danger from crime in Sittwe.

“They’re like gangsters breaking into homes in broad daylight. They even take the furniture,” he said.

Inside Sittwe, a source who asked for anonymity told Al Jazeera that the Arakan Liberation Army, an armed group linked to the military, monitors conversations among local people while troops raid homes and check residents for tattoos as signs of AA support.

“The situation is unpredictable,” the source said.

“We can’t guess what will happen next.”

A representative of the United League of Arakan (ULA), the AA’s political wing, described Sittwe as “a stark example” of military rule, saying the regime’s leaders have “treated Arakan as occupied territory” for decades.

Rising civilian toll

As the AA advances across Rakhine State, the military government has turned to air strikes – a tactic used nationwide since the generals seized power in 2021.

In Rakhine, the ULA says air raids killed 402 civilians between late 2023 and mid-2025, including 96 children. Another 26 civilians died this year from artillery, landmines or extrajudicial killings, it said.

Air strikes on civilians “cannot produce tangible military outcomes”, a ULA representative said, describing such tactics as “terrorism” in a country where more than 80,000 people are estimated to have been killed in fighting since the 2021 coup.

Amid the grinding conflict, both the AA and Myanmar’s military have also implemented conscription to bolster their forces.

The AA has drafted men aged 18 to 45 and women aged 18 to 25 since May, calling its campaign a “war of national liberation”, while the military has added an estimated 70,000 men to its ranks over its 16-month military draft drive.

Rakhine has also been scarred by ethnic violence, most brutally during the military’s 2017 crackdown that drove more than 730,000 Rohingya into Bangladesh – atrocities from that time which are now before the International Court of Justice in a case of suspected genocide.

More than a million Rohingya remain in refugee camps along the Myanmar-Bangladesh border, with the UN reporting 150,000 new arrivals over the past 18 months.

Reports accuse the AA of abuses against Rohingya civilians that remain in Rakhine, including an alleged massacre of 600 people last year – allegations the AA denies, claiming images of human remains were actually government soldiers killed in battle.

According to the rebels’ political wing, the ULA, “Muslim residents” in its areas of control in Rakhine “are experiencing better lives compared to any other period in recent history”.

The ULA, like the military government, avoids the term “Rohingya” in an attempt to imply the community is not indigenous to Rakhine.

To further confuse an already complex situation, the military has armed members of the Rohingya community to fight the AA, a dramatic reversal after decades of persecution of their communities by Myanmar’s armed forces.

The International Crisis Group (ICG) think tank also warns that Rohingya armed groups are using religious language to mobilise refugees in the camps in Bangladesh against the AA.

But “a Rohingya insurgency against the Arakan Army is unlikely to succeed”, the ICG reports, adding that it could also heighten anti-Rohingya sentiment in Myanmar and damage prospects for the repatriation of refugees from Bangladesh to homes they fled inside Rakhine.

Tensions are also simmering with Bangladesh, which wants the AA – in control of the entire border region between Myanmar and Bangladesh – to accept refugees back into areas under its authority.

Dhaka is also reportedly backing armed Rohingya groups to pressure Arakan forces, while the AA is wary that Bangladesh could support a breakaway zone in Rakhine, threatening its territorial ambitions for the state.

Battle for Chinese-built port

South of Sittwe, a decisive fight looms for Kyaukphyu, the coastal hub linking Myanmar to China’s Yunnan province through twin oil and gas pipelines and a deep-sea port that is part of China’s Belt and Road infrastructure project.

Anthony Davis, a Bangkok-based analyst with defence publication Janes, predicts the AA could launch a monsoon offensive between September and October, using cloudy skies as cover against aerial assaults by the military’s warplanes and which would boost its chances of capturing Kyaukphyu.

Davis said munition stocks seized by the AA in 2024 could dwindle by 2026, while Chinese pressure may limit arms supplies used by the rebels from entering northern Myanmar – factors that add urgency to the AA pressing its attacks now.

He estimated 3,000 government troops are defending Kyaukphyu, backed by jets, drones and naval firepower.

With at least 40,000 fighters after its conscription drive – and now becoming Myanmar’s largest ethnic army – the AA could likely commit 10,000 troops to the assault on Kyaukphyu, Davis said.

Based on its track record, Davis believes the AA has a “significant chance” of seizing the port, in what could become “one of the most consequential and costliest campaigns” of the civil war.

About 50 Chinese security personnel remain in Kyaukphyu, according to a Chinese industry source cited by Davis, who believes Beijing has accepted the AA might capture the facility – as long as its assets stay protected.

But Beijing has also intensified its backing of Myanmar’s military rulers in recent months.

The ULA representative said Kyaukphyu is a “sensitive area” for the AA, where it uses “the least amount of force necessary” and maintains a “firm policy of protecting foreign investments and personnel from all countries”.

The AA would “strive to pursue all possible means to foster positive relations with China”, the representative added.

Widening War

India, too, has stakes in Rakhine through the Kaladan transport project, which aims to connect India’s remote northeast regions to the Bay of Bengal via the India-built Sittwe port and river routes running through AA-controlled territory.

That corridor would allow India to bypass Bangladesh and create an alternative trade route for India with Myanmar.

Analysts say taking control of the port, road and river network could allow the AA to tax Indian trade, boosting its finances while also undermining the Myanmar military’s ties with New Delhi.

If the AA does succeed in capturing Rakhine’s coastal ports, the armed group could feasibly control transport and trade gateways vital to both China and India, which would create leverage that no other armed participant in the Myanmar civil war holds.

That could elevate the AA-backed Arakan People’s Revolutionary Government as a regional powerbroker, Davis said.

The Institute for Strategy and Policy-Myanmar says the AA is also deployed beyond Rakhine and now leads the country’s most extensive alliance of armed groups.

“No other ethnic armed group has woven such a far-reaching web of influence among the country’s next generation of fighters,” the institute wrote.

But with the military regaining lost ground in other regions of the country while preparing to hold elections in December – already widely dismissed as a sham – there is a prospect the AA could one day agree to a ceasefire with the military government or continue to fight and potentially be strong enough to face the military alone.

Commenting on such a scenario, the ULA representative called for vigilance against the military’s traditional “divide and rule” strategy.