Why Chinese pleasure over the US fiasco in Afghanistan will be short-lived

When the Schadenfreude over this moment of US defeat wears off, China will see that neither America’s withdrawal nor the Taliban’s resurgence are in its best interest
Although Chinese officials have been engaging the Taliban, the Islamist group makes for a strange partner

Chi Wang

Published: 1:30am, 23 Aug 2021

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The stunning pace at which Afghanistan’s government collapsed after the withdrawal of many US troops last month has shocked the international community and embarrassed the Biden administration.

There have been recriminations from Republicans and Democrats, from adversaries and allies, over the US withdrawal and the chaotic scenes at Kabul airport.

China’s state media and netizens have largely lapped up this moment of American defeat. As Helen Raleigh wrote in the Federalist, “in the larger geopolitical context, the real biggest winner in Afghanistan is the Chinese Communist Party”.

Most dramatically, the return of the Taliban severely undermines US President Joe Biden’s message that “America is back” and ready to stand up to authoritarianism around the world.

European allies, whose partnership Biden has prioritised in his foreign policy and China policy especially, are disappointed by the execution of the US withdrawal.

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China’s Global Times has urged Taiwan to take the situation in Afghanistan as a warning that the US cannot be counted on in the event of a military crisis.

But when the Schadenfreude wears off, China will find that neither the US withdrawal from Afghanistan nor the resurgence of the Taliban are ultimately in its best interest.

China has never committed combat troops to Afghanistan and has vowed never to do so. It is well aware of Afghanistan’s reputation as a “graveyard of empires”, having learned this centuries before the British, Soviets and now the Americans.

When I was in elementary school in China in the 1930s, I remember learning about Zhang Qian’s expedition to central Asia, including present-day Afghanistan, in the Han dynasty.

Time for China to stop hedging its bets in Afghanistan

While this expedition is remembered mostly for establishing the Silk Road, the trade route linking China with the West, Zhang also shared his experience of the rivalries and conflicts that dominated the region; China’s engagement there was focused on trade, not conquest.

Modern China’s ties with Afghanistan were strengthened by a Friendship and Mutual Non-Aggression Treaty in 1960.

A police officer patrols the site of the Buddhas of Bamiyan, which were destroyed by the Taliban in 2001, on March 3. Bamiyan, in central Afghanistan, lies on the Silk Road that linked China to Central Asia and beyond. Photo: AFP

Afghanistan’s neutrality in the Cold War stood in the way of greater Sino-Afghan cooperation, at least until the Soviet invasion in 1979, after which the Chinese helped the US in its covert operations to arm the mujahideen rebels.

The Taliban first emerged in the mid-1990s amid the chaos following the Soviet withdrawal in 1989. In 1996, the Taliban declared an Islamic Emirate, and the nation became a hub for terrorist groups including al-Qaeda.

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China took tentative steps to engage the Taliban. A Chinese delegation was in Kabul negotiating with the Taliban on September 11, 2001, leading to scrutiny of China’s ties with the group.

The Taliban’s harbouring of al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden, the orchestrator of the September 11 attacks, prompted the US invasion in October 2001, through which the Taliban was overthrown.

China was a net beneficiary of the nearly 20 years that the US spent in Afghanistan attempting to stabilise the country and build a stable democratic government to replace the Taliban – an effort that cost the US more than US$2 trillion and 2,400 lives.

Meanwhile, China was busy modernising its military and gaining a strategic foothold in the South China Sea. As Biden pointed out in his speech defending the withdrawal, China “would love nothing more than the United States to continue to funnel billions of dollars in resources and attention into stabilising Afghanistan indefinitely”.

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Moreover, China had its own reasons for supporting the capture of bin Laden. China’s Xinjiang region borders Afghanistan. Some Uygur separatists from Xinjiang reportedly sought training in Afghanistan, including under bin Laden.

The threat posed by such separatists – including the East Turkestan Islamic Movement, which the US designated as a terrorist organisation in 2002 – may have been exaggerated by Beijing to justify its aggressive actions in Xinjiang.

China needs better friends than Taliban to make most of its rise

Yet Uygur separatists have been involved in terrorist acts in the region, including a 2016 attack on the Chinese embassy in Kyrgyzstan. China does not want Afghanistan to once again become a terrorist hub, any more than the US does.

In recent weeks, Chinese officials have been working towards recognising the Taliban government; Foreign Minister Wang Yi met a Taliban delegation last month and the Chinese embassy is one of the few in Kabul that remains open.

Yet the Taliban is not a natural partner for China. Beijing’s infrastructure programme, the Belt and Road Initiative, has largely bypassed Afghanistan.

Under President Xi Jinping, China has been increasingly clamping down on all religious faiths, including Islam. While the Taliban has not openly criticised China’s actions in Xinjiang, a government committed to sharia law makes a strange partner for another that is paranoid about Islam.

When the dust settles in Kabul, it is possible that Biden will regain his foreign policy credibility. The US presence in Afghanistan was very unpopular with the American public, and despite the disarray of the withdrawal, early public opinion polls have found most Americans agreeing with the decision.

Thus, Beijing should not count on the Afghanistan withdrawal, however controversial and botched, to taint the remainder of Biden’s presidency or undermine his efforts to confront China.

The future of Afghanistan remains uncertain and largely depends on whether the Taliban reinstalls a regime similar to the one 20 years ago, and whether it again allows international terrorist movements to flourish within its borders.

It is far too early to tell what is going to happen, but China is unlikely to celebrate the US’ embarrassment for too long. As Andrew Small of the German Marshall Fund, a Washington think tank, told The Wall Street Journal, “China would really prefer not to be dealing with any of this.”

Chi Wang, a former head of the Chinese section of the US Library of Congress, is president of the US-China Policy Foundation