Myanmar’s polluting mines selling to China through Thai companies

At a northern Thai border crossing, trucks loaded with antimony and other minerals cross daily from Myanmar's Karen state, much of it mined in unregulated operations and financed by Chinese investors, then re-exported to China through more than 50 Thai-registered companies. Reporters were barred from photographing soldiers or the minerals themselves even while documenting the legal crossing.

The expansion of mining since Myanmar's 2021 coup, now numbering more than 2,200 identified sites, has coincided with heavy metal contamination in multiple rivers feeding into the Mekong, poisoning farmland and drinking water for tens of thousands of people in Thailand. In the first nine months of 2025, Thailand imported over 105,000 tons of critical minerals from Myanmar, more than double the prior volume.

Traders describe a loosely organized system where local landowners lease ground to Chinese operators, with little accountability for the pollution that follows the ore across the border.

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