(Staff post from IRRAWADDY NEWS JOURNAL on 19 June 2026.)
China
Arrests Myanmar-Born US Scholar on Suspicion of Spying: China arrested a
Myanmar-born scholar on its southwestern border in Yunnan Province early this
month, accusing the US citizen of spying and endangering Chinese national
security, China’s Foreign Ministry confirmed on Friday.
China
has notified the US Consulate General in the southern Chinese city of Guangzhou
of the arrest, Lin Jian, a ministry spokesperson, told a regular news
conference when asked about U Min Zin’s disappearance in Kunming last week,
Reuters said. U Min Zin, a US citizen originally from Myanmar, was arrested by
security forces on June 3 upon his arrival at the airport in the provincial
capital Kunming.
The Irrawaddy has learned that he was invited to attend an event hosted by a Chinese university there. He studies Myanmar politics and is a founding member and executive director of the Institute for Strategy and Policy-Myanmar (ISP-Myanmar), a nongovernmental policy think tank whose research focuses on China-Myanmar relations, among other issues. ISP-Myanmar was not available for comment on Friday.
The
US State Department told The New York Times in a statement it was aware of
reports regarding a US citizen being detained in China. “Whenever a US citizen
is detained, we work to provide the appropriate consular assistance,” the
department said while declining to give further details, citing federal privacy
law. The New York Times said US diplomats were aware of the arrest.
As a
student activist, U Min Zin joined the 1988 Democracy Uprising in Myanmar, and
later went into exile to avoid arrest. He previously worked for The Irrawaddy
as a culture editor before relocating to the US and becoming a naturalized
citizen.
U Min Zin is a political science PhD candidate at the University of California, Berkeley. His research interests include civil-military relations, democratization and ethnic conflicts, with a focus on Myanmar and other Southeast Asian countries.
He
founded ISP-Myanmar in 2016 and has written extensively on Myanmar’s politics,
economy and international relations for The New York Times, Foreign Policy and
other news outlets.
During
the National League for Democracy government from 2016-20, he led and hosted
the “Yaw Mingyi Zayat” talk shows, an intellectual forum on Myanmar’s
sustainable development and policy reform featuring prominent public figures
from various sectors.
Since
the 2021 coup, he and ISP have been based in Thailand, focusing their research
on three main areas: conflict, peace and security; China studies; and
socio-economic and political economy. These studies have been conducted in the
context of Myanmar’s political and social crises since the military takeover,
as well as China’s growing influence on the military junta, which recently
rebranded as a pseudo-civilian regime.
