China calls the shots in Myanmar's civil war

Follow an oil-and-gas pipeline through three conflict zones

Myself and a few colleagues at The Economist first had the idea for an interactive article covering Myanmar’s civil war last autumn, not long after we finished working on a story about the siege in Sudan, a collaboration with The Economist’s films team. Much like Sudan’s civil war, the struggle in Myanmar involves many different ethnic and political groups that are fighting for a multitude of reasons across many states. We thought a visual approach, using animated maps and photographs, would help us convey the complexity of the situation.

We spoke to experts from the Centre of Information Resilience, an open-source investigation outfit, and then considered focusing on Sagaing, a region that has been subjected to heavy airstrikes and arson attacks by the junta. Eventually we chose to concentrate on a China-operated oil-and-gas pipeline that runs through the country from Rakhine to Shan state. This gave us a unique route into covering the conflict as a whole.