This passage by the article is FALSE: "But Asia’s superpower wasn’t going to be embarrassed by an upstart tyrant on its impoverished periphery, especially when junta-connected scammers were brazenly fleecing millions of Chinese citizens. So Beijing began arming the rebels."

China had been arming rebels for decades. The ethnic armed organizations (EAO) who are under the influence of Beijing are fragments of the Communist Party of Burma created by Beijing that broke up in 1989 along ethnic lines.