As the West reels Beijing swoops to firm up ties with Taliban

Singapore: Beijing has laid the groundwork for a fresh relationship with the Taliban, moving to maintain its diplomatic presence in Kabul and boost investment as the West reels from the collapse of its two-decade military and political campaign in Afghanistan.

Chinese leaders had four meetings with their past, present and future Afghan counterparts in the month leading up to the fall of Kabul.

The price of Chinese cooperation and economic investment is for an Islamist Afghanistan to remain silent on the plight of more than 1 million Muslim Uighurs in Xinjiang. The Chinese region border Afghanistan on the narrow Wakhan Corridor in the north-east of the country.

Taliban co-founder Abdul Ghani Baradar, left, and Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi in Tianjin, China.Credit:AP

“We hope the Afghan Taliban will resolutely and effectively combat [the East Turkestan Islamic Movement] to remove obstacles, play a positive role and create enabling conditions for security, stability, development and cooperation in the region,” Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi said after meeting with the Taliban’s political chief Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar in Tianjin on July 28.

It was three weeks before Kabul would fall, but the pair had already begun discussing how to foster “an enabling investment environment” and the Taliban’s role in the country’s “peace, reconciliation and reconstruction process”.

The Taliban, while careful not to specifically identify the Uighurs, has pledged repeatedly not to interfere in China’s internal affairs. “The Afghan Taliban will never allow any force to use the Afghan territory to engage in acts detrimental to China,” the Taliban said according to a Chinese summary of the meeting.

Afghans climb on a US Air Force C-17 transport plane as it moves down a runway of the Kabul international airport. Credit:AP

The principle of “non-interference” is increasingly being used by Beijing to draw a sharp contrast with US intervention, the consequences of its doomed Afghanistan campaign and minimise scrutiny of its actions in Hong Kong, Xinjiang and Taiwan.

“Most countries in East Asia have a common past of being bullied by foreign powers,” Wang told the Association of South East Asian Nations Regional Forum on August 6. “However, in the present era, there should be no more ‘lecturers’ or ‘saviours’.”

Lin Minwang, a South Asia expert with Shanghai’s Fudan University told Chinese state media on Thursday that this was Beijing being pragmatic: “How you want to rule your country is largely your own business, just don’t let that affect China,” he said.

The Wakhan corridor is Afghanistan’s only border with China.Credit:Marta Pascual Juanola

But John Blaxland, a professor of international security at Australian National University and a former director of Joint Intelligence Operations, said there were broader implications for the global order.

“It is a deeply chilling message about how America can change its mind and despite platitudes, not follow through on them,” he said. “It’s one that speaks to an eclipse of the unipolar moment, it speaks to an eclipse of American power.”

Blaxland said Beijing recognising the Taliban government was now a formality. The US would likely follow.

“[The US and its allies] have spent trillions of dollars in the dust of Afghanistan and Iraq,” he said.

“The same trillions of dollars conceivably could have been spent on a [Chinese] Belt and Road-like initiative, or rehabilitation of American infrastructure that might have secured American prosperity and stability for all of us to share into the future.”

Boris Ruge, the vice-chairman of the Munich Security Conference, the world’s largest security gathering, said Beijing would make “maximum use of the images out of Afghanistan to undermine America’s network of allies and partners in the Indo-Pacific”.

“They have plenty of bad images to work with,” Ruge said, as videos were beamed around the world of desperate Afghans clinging to planes to get out of Kabul.

Republican Mike Waltz, an army veteran, said on Twitter the chaotic end to the war sent a terrible message to other countries feeling under threat. “If I were in Taiwan or Ukraine right now watching all this unfold, I would be terrified knowing this is how the United States will react under this administration,” he said.

But Ruge said the US withdrawal was also a conscious decision to end America’s longest war to concentrate resources where they are needed. “First and foremost vis-à-vis China,” he told The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age.

The former deputy ambassador to Washington said the situations were not comparable because the withdrawal was a part of the American pivot away from the Middle East to its immediate region.

“I think the people of Taiwan and Japan know that America is doing this because they now see the great power challenge at the eastern end of the Eurasian landmass,” added Blaxland. “That is the more significant challenge for them to be prepared to respond to.”

In Kabul, the shifting power balance is already playing out in the diplomatic quarter.

The US, Germany, Britain, Canada and Australia are among the dozen to have shut down their embassy operations since the Taliban began their drive towards the capital.

China’s embassy remains open. “It is still operating normally,” said foreign ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying.

Eryk Bagshaw is the North Asia correspondent for The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age.

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