ASEAN Beat | Politics | Southeast Asia

Propaganda and Fake News Editors: Myanmar’s Manufactured Transition

Min Aung Hlaing’s “civilian” government rests on a sophisticated propaganda architecture, and the independent media needed to challenge it is running out of funds.

The website of CNI Myanmar, a Yangon-based news agency founded in 2021, as seen on Jun. 8, 2026.

On April 10, Myanmar’s most heavily sanctioned general donned a longyi and declared himself president, marking the culmination of a carefully planned political transition. Min Aung Hlaing’s inauguration also represented the endpoint of a propaganda campaign that had been in development since January 2025. Understanding this propaganda machine – who built it, how it operates, and who amplifies it internationally – is important not just for Myanmar analysts, but also for every government in the region considering whether to normalize relations with the new government.

The junta’s information operation has several distinct layers, each addressing a different audience. At the formal end sit the Global New Light of Myanmar, the civilian state newspaper and Myawady Daily (the Myanmar military’s own organ, run by its Directorate of Public Relations and Psychological Warfare). No serious observer takes either at face value.

The more consequential layer is the Myanmar Narrative Think Tank (MNTT), established under the Ministry of Information in January 2025 and operating through its public website. The founding members including a media operator with roots in the Than Shwe era (Ko Ko, chair, Yangon Media Group); an economist with international academic credentials (Dr. Zaw Oo, also a Central Bank director and executive director of the respected Centre for Economic and Social Development); a Russia-trained former military officer who runs a defense research institute (Dr. Naing Swe Oo); and a former Health Ministry technocrat (Dr. Khin Maung Lwin). It also includes several individuals who took part in the Myanmar peace process in the past, bringing credibility in terms of ethnic reconciliation and former closeness to the National League for Democracy government.

Each member was recruited to cover a specific narrative domain, such as economic credibility, security framing, ethnic reconciliation, and technocratic legitimacy. They also provide the civilian face that generals in uniform cannot credibly supply themselves.

The MNTT’s operating method was visible in its inaugural event, the “Myanmar Beyond 2025: Challenges and Opportunities in the Multipolar World” forum, which was held in Naypyidaw on March 21, 2025. Min Aung Hlaing opened the forum, presenting commemorative medals to foreign participants. The roster of speakers was carefully assembled for international optics; it included Professor Alexander Dugin (Russia), Professor Zhang Weiwei of Fudan University (China), Brigadier Vinod Anand of India’s Vivekananda International Foundation, former Nepalese Prime Minister Madhav Nepal, and Thai Foreign Minister Sihasak Phuangketkeow. As with the MNTT’s founding members, each speaker lent credibility from a different regional direction. The Ministry of Information stated that the forum’s purpose was to “counter baseless accusations” and “promote the country’s image.”

Below the MNTT sits CNI Myanmar, a Yangon-based news agency founded in 2021, the same year as the coup, that claims to operate on principles of “Independence, Justice and Neutrality.” It has no named editors, no disclosed ownership, and no track record of challenging junta red lines. It continues to operate openly in Yangon while more than 20 independent outlets have had their licenses revoked and more than 200 journalists have been arrested since the coup.

CNI’s method is worth examining precisely because it is not as crude as the Global New Light of Myanmar or the Myawady Daily. It publishes significant political headlines that are crafted to seem legitimate, albeit without named sources or much evidentiary basis. It publishes MNTT statements verbatim, adopting, for example, the same institutional framing the junta’s ICJ delegation employed in January 2026, a characterization of the Rohingya crisis that Bangladesh’s Foreign Ministry formally protested as “offensive and historically false.” It also attempts to frame the new rubber-stamp Union Parliament as a normal democratic institution. Obviously, its coverage omits any mention of airstrikes on civilians, conditions for political prisoners, battlefield losses, and the continued detention of Aung San Suu Kyi.

The result is a news product that, to a reader without the necessary context, might resemble legitimate local journalism. In a media environment where independent reporters have been arrested, killed, or forced into exile, CNI is filling the void by producing content that resembles journalism but functions as propaganda.

Beijing and Moscow at the Amplifier

The MNTT’s international reach was extended in August 2025 when Ko Ko personally signed a memorandum of understanding with Xinhua’s Yangon Bureau Chief. Myanmar’s junta thereby formally joined China’s Global South Joint Communication Partnership Program, launched at the BRICS Media Forum in Brazil in July 2025, connecting MNTT output to a network of 260 institutions across 110 countries. The program is explicitly framed around countering what Beijing calls Western “cognitive warfare,” as articulated in a report released at the September 2025 Kunming forum co-hosted by Xinhua and the CCP’s Yunnan Provincial Committee.

Russia plays a complementary role, providing the Myanmar military with arms transfers, veto cover in the U.N. Security Council, and state media coverage defending Myanmar’s transition. On signing a five-year military cooperation pact with Myanmar’s military junta in........

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