Parsing China’s geostrategic designs in the post-war Afghanistan

Abstract

China boasts prolonged history of relations with Afghanistan. Throughout the 2010s, China has seen Afghanistan as a key part of what can be described the dynamically transnational “Belt-Road-Initiative”. Now with the Taliban takeover of the country, the question arises how China would be able to play a premier role in the post-war Afghanistan while trying to shun itself to be embroiled into the geopolitical mire as the superpowers did in history? The current study addresses two questions through an analytical-empirical approach to how China will realize its geostrategic design in Afghanistan. First, what are China’s objectives which are supposed to differ from those of the USSR and the USA? Second, why would China likely succeed in the country where the superpowers had failed before? Over the past decades, China has geared up its strategic ties with Russia, Pakistan, Iran, known as the Eurasian partners on the Afghan issue, and Central Asian states which are either the neighbors of Afghanistan or the member states of the SCO. Since Beijing endorses multilateralism and inclusive partnership in foreign affairs, it will unlikely act alone on the issue of Afghanistan. Rather, China is supposed to work on it through triple-level platforms–the Eurasian partners, SCO member states with border proximity of Afghanistan and the multilateral organizations such as the U.N. and the G-20–to fulfill its geostrategic designs in Afghanistan.