Join on WhatsApp
Join on Telegram
Denver – For many, the fall of Kabul to the Taliban was the end of Afghanistan, or at least the start of an unprecedentedly bleak period for the country. For China, however, the triumph of the Taliban over the now defunct, pro-Western government could be the beginning of a new business and geopolitical opportunity in Afghanistan.
The Chinese government has not been shy in displaying its interest in working with the radical Islamist group. In July, Beijing invited senior Taliban leader Mullah Abdul Ghani Barada to a meeting in China with Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi. This was the first time that a Taliban leader was invited to diplomatic talks with Chinese officials in the East Asian country.
During Wang’s meeting with Barada, the Chinese FM promised to “bring the Taliban back into the political mainstream,” and discussed the implications of the withdrawal of Western forces from the region. With the Taliban now in control of Afghanistan’s future, China appears to be one of the few parties set to benefit from the former government’s collapse, at least economically.
China is currently the largest investor into Afghanistan, which is reported to have the largest untapped reserves of copper, gold, iron, coal, gas, cobalt, mercury, and lithium, according to the South China Morning Post.
With these valuable resources still intact after a two-decade long war that has seen the US depart in panic, China continues to eye Afghanistan as the next step in its growing overseas investment portfolio.
But the Chinese government is also wary of the Taliban’s victory, due to the threat of Islamist militant groups within its own borders. The Turkistan Islamic Party (TIP) is an Islamic militant group reported to be operating within the western Chinese state of Xinjiang. The group has declared its intentions to remove Xinjiang from Chinese control, and convert the state into an independent Islamic country.
A considerable number of TIP members have been a robust presence in foreign wars, including in Afghanistan. With combat operations winding down in Afghanistan, many of these members will likely return to Xinjiang with years of guerilla combat experience, and could pose a significant threat to Chinese control in the region.
China shares a 47-mile long border with eastern Afghanistan along the Hindu Kush mountain range. Despite China announcing in 2018 the creation of a special border unit dedicated to monitoring security in the region, the remote area still presents a difficult challenge for the Chinese government.
And so, as the new Kabul government and Beijing begin to explore bilateral ties, the Chinese government has been forced to reassess its future relations with its southwestern neighbor.
During earlier meetings between the two parties, the Taliban assured Beijing that they would work together to help contain “spillover effects” of insurgents located in Afghanistan. However, with their newly won power, it remains to be seen how genuine these promises really are.
