Raffaello Pantucci

As the United States embarks on its withdrawal from Afghanistan, some wonder what China will do given the country’s critical interests in South and Central Asia. Chinese President Xi Jinping’s Belt and Road Initiative is merely the latest articulation of a strategic narrative that imbues the South and Central Asian region with critical importance to China. As Raffaello Pantucci, a senior fellow at the Royal United Services Institute (RUSI), explains in the following interview, China has long-running interests in the wider region. While Beijing is not poised to follow the Soviet Union and now, the United States, into the “graveyard of empires,” those interests remain important to China.

What interests in the wider South and Central Asia region most draw Beijing’s attention?

China is most worried about security problems it perceives as being based in South and Central Asia which might threaten domestic stability. Principal amongst these is a fear that the region might become a staging ground for Uyghur dissidents or militants to create instability in Xinjiang. A secondary group of concerns emanates from a fear of threats to Chinese economic investments and interests in the region. In Beijing’s conception these investments are also linked to Xinjiang as well, as their success is in part linked to prosperity and growth in Xinjiang, which China sees as the key to longer-term stability within its borders.

At a wider strategic level, China is worried that the region could be used by adversary powers, like the United States, as a place from which to foment instability within China. This has most recently been tied by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs directly to Afghanistan, but is a persistent fear that has always lurked in the back of Chinese minds. From their perspective, the region is their backyard and directly linked to some of the most sensitive parts of their country.

Finally, this region is the cradle of Xi Jinping’s foreign policy vision, the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI). The concept was launched in the Kazakh capital, then-Astana (now Nur-Sultan), and the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) is called the keynote project of the vision. This gives it a particular importance conceptually to Beijing as failure here would be tantamount to failure of his vision. The economic interests that are linked to BRI in the region are important to China, but are often overstated as the priorities for Beijing’s concerns. The economic interests are important to the specific firms involved; the strategic aspect comes in terms of the impact they might have on domestic growth and stability, in particular in Xinjiang.

Given those interests, what are China’s stakes in the Afghan peace process? What has Beijing done to help move the process forward?

China’s interests in Afghanistan tie directly into these concerns in three ways. First, Beijing has consistently been worried that Uyghur militants based in Afghanistan use it as a place to attack or cause trouble in China. This shapes China’s considerations with regards the Afghan peace process, as they are keen to ensure that whoever comes out on top will share these concerns and do something about them.

There is also increasingly a concern from Beijing of American military bases directly on their border. This concern is one over which China’s view has oscillated over time. Broadly speaking, America has always been considered an adversary. But within an Afghan context, China has at various moments appreciated the fact that the U.S. is there fighting against militants on the ground and bringing some stability to the country (U.S. forces are also reported to have killed prominent Uyghur militants). But this has been balanced against the worry of this U.S. military capability being used against China. Currently the scales seem to be tipping toward this latter concern.

This backdrop shapes China’s interests in the Afghan peace process, which have been substantial but limited at the same time. China has played a brokering role a number of times in terms of encouraging parties to the table and offering itself as the convenor to talks. It has hosted the Taliban; it has created and engaged in multiple regional and bilateral formats. It has repeatedly sought to push the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) to do more about Afghanistan. But it has not really put its full weight and push into these efforts, preferring instead to let the process work itself out, and ensuring Beijing has links to all of the parties in some way to ensure its concerns will be addressed.

What kind of counterterrorism or security role, if any, might China play in Afghanistan after a possible U.S. withdrawal?

So far, China has largely sought to strengthen the capability of its neighbors that share borders with Afghanistan to ensure that they cannot become conduits for problems from Afghanistan to overflow into China. It has done this through direct support for Tajik and Pakistani border forces, as well as providing support for Afghan forces in Badakhshan, and deploying members of the People’s Armed Police (PAP) to work with local actors. They have developed the currently quiet Quadrilateral Coordination and Cooperation Mechanism (QCCM), which brings together security chiefs from all four countries around the Wakhan Corridor. These security engagements are all ultimately about protecting China from problems in Afghanistan getting into Xinjiang. At the same time, there appears to have been a general escalation in terms of the adventurousness of Chinese intelligence in terms of their attempts to deal with Uyghur threats in Afghanistan and Pakistan, as evidenced by the spy scandal in Kabul in December last year.

It is not clear, however, that this will all change much post-American withdrawal. It is unlikely that we are going to see a major Chinese deployment. What is likely is that China will seek out and support local actors that it can use to ensure their terrorism concerns are addressed. Chinese actors are also likely to strengthen their relationships with all the sides on in Afghanistan, to ensure that they are able to hedge against any possible outcomes. It is possible that we may hear about increased Chinese intelligence deployments, but after the fiasco in December it is very likely they will work more carefully to ensure these things stay out of the public eye.

The overriding Chinese analysis with Afghanistan remains that the country is a graveyard of empires, something the American withdrawal will only reinforce. Beijing sees no good of moving in with substantial force, and while Chinese hubris more generally has definitely increased, deploying into Afghanistan remains a step too far.

How has the Afghanistan-Pakistan bilateral relationship impacted the peace process? And how, if at all, does China’s close relations with Pakistan affect that dynamic?

China has at various moments sought to encourage Pakistan to play a more productive role in Afghanistan. It has used its links and influence to help broker meetings, while Pakistan has similarly helped mitigate Chinese concerns in Afghanistan and made introductions. This role has been positive, but not decisive. Afghans have been frustrated by the fact that China favors Islamabad over Kabul, and Islamabad has been unwilling to answer all Chinese requests with regards Afghanistan.

At the same time, Pakistan and China share broader strategic concerns with regards to India, and about U.S. roles in the region. These are not always identical, and China has expressed concerns about the India-Pakistan relationship completely falling apart and pushed the Pakistanis to engage with the Indians. But at the same time, this tends to shift depending on broader Chinese worries about the United States.

The Afghanistan-Pakistan relationship is going to be crucial for Kabul’s future no matter who is in charge. Beijing recognizes this and has a historically closer relationship with Pakistan, but ultimately would like both to be stable and focused on Chinese concerns whether those relate to Uyghur militants or American interference in China’s backyard. India registers as a tertiary concern within this context.

For much of the last decade, the Chinese presence in the South and Central Asia region has been couched in terms of the Belt and Road Initiative -- whether building dry ports in Kazakhstan or the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC). Was that framing useful? Is it still?

China’s engagement with Central and South Asia since the end of the Cold War has been framed in Belt and Road-like terms. Starting with Li Peng’s 1994 visit to Central Asia, the Shanghai Five, which developed into the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO), all were framed as being focused in part on economic opportunity and links to China along old silk roads. In South Asia, the 1999 Bangladesh-China-India-Myanmar Economic Corridor (BCIM) and the even earlier Karakoram Highway linking China and Pakistan pushed these ideas into South Asia. Jiang Zemin’s Great Western Development Strategy was the other side of this coin, as the internal push by Beijing to seek to improve economic development across the then-underdeveloped central regions of China, which would naturally connect with Central and South Asia.

This is important to remember as President Xi’s Belt and Road vision is simply the latest articulation of this long-standing strategic narrative. It is more significant than the earlier expressions in part given China’s current place in the world, but also as this concept has now been globalized with the BRI the overriding foreign policy vision articulated by China on the world stage. This imbues a level of importance to Central and South Asia as the place where this concept was born and first tested out.

But the BRI is a framing rather than a project. And it is a framing that has been enshrined in the CCP’s constitution. This means that as long as President Xi is in power, this concept is likely to remain important in Chinese thinking and articulation, and possibly beyond that. What this means in practice, however, is flexible and will likely shift dependent on the situation on the ground. But the underlying logic of the BRI, in terms of developing connectivity and prosperity to ultimately help China grow and remain stable, will remain a central driver of Chinese considerations toward Central and South Asia. The geopolitical and strategic benefits that accrue from this starting point are further useful tools of influence for Beijing.