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Foreign minister, signaling a growing role for Beijing in the country, urges group to pursue peace efforts
The Taliban’s Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar met with Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi in Tianjin, China, on Wednesday.
Photo: Li Ran/Xinhua/Associated Press
China’s foreign minister urged the Taliban to distance itself from terrorist groups and take steps to establish peace in Afghanistan, in a meeting with the group on Chinese soil that signaled Beijing is stepping in diplomatically as the U.S. withdraws from the country.
At the session with Taliban co-founder and political office chief Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar in the northeastern Chinese city of Tianjin on Wednesday, Foreign Minister Wang Yi called the Taliban a pivotal military and political force in Afghanistan that is expected to play an important role in reconstructing the country, according to China’s Foreign Ministry.
Mr. Wang asked all factions in Afghanistan to make progress on reconciliation and establish a broad and inclusive political structure, without detailing what that might look like.
Beijing has had numerous interactions with the Taliban over the years, but the need for reassurances has grown as the Taliban make a string of advances on the battlefield. The Taliban see China as a source of international legitimacy, a potential economic supporter and a means of influence over Pakistan, a Chinese ally that has aided the group.
Peace talks between the Afghan government and the Taliban have dragged on with little progress, increasing the likelihood of more bloodshed once the U.S. fully withdraws. The Taliban’s gains recently drove the U.S. military to launch airstrikes in the country, despite plans to depart by the end of August.
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Beijing isn’t trying to strengthen the Taliban but has grown tired of U.S. peace efforts, and is trying to use its influence to persuade and, perhaps, pressure the Taliban to engage seriously in the peace process, said Barnett Rubin, a former U.S. State Department official and senior fellow at the Center on International Cooperation at New York University.
In meeting with the Taliban one on one, “China is taking the lead without the U.S.,” he said.
Beijing has an opportunity to fill a power vacuum as the U.S. decreases its presence following two decades of war, and has wanted to expand its signature Belt and Road infrastructure program in Afghanistan. Chinese, Afghan and Pakistani foreign ministers tentatively agreed on a highway connection between the Pakistani city of Peshawar and Kabul in 2019, before the Covid-19 pandemic.
The few projects that China has in Afghanistan have mostly stalled because of continuing violence. Analysts say it remains too early for Beijing to think about investing further in Afghanistan and that alongside other countries in the region, China has to first help secure peace, while moving to contain any potential security risks under a resurgent Taliban.
“ “China is taking the lead without the U.S.” ”
— Afghanistan expert Barnett Rubin
In deepening its ties with the Taliban, Beijing has to be careful not to upset the Afghan government, with which it maintains formal diplomatic relations. China signaled it intends to further develop that relationship, with a phone call earlier this month between Chinese leader Xi Jinping and Afghan President Ashraf Ghani.
“They need to straddle this quite carefully,” although the government in Kabul knows that the Chinese government is ruthlessly pragmatic, said Andrew Small, a senior fellow specializing in Chinese foreign policy at the German Marshall Fund, a Washington-based think tank.
Afghanistan’s ambassador in Beijing, Javid Ahmed Qaem, said Monday that his government wants Beijing to play a more active role in the country. That includes helping to build trust between the Afghan government and Pakistan.
He demurred when asked about his views on Beijing’s burgeoning relationship with the Taliban, saying that the Taliban has been talking to many countries and that Beijing keeps the Afghans informed about its interactions with the group.
Beijing’s attempt to exert influence on the Taliban could also expose it to more friction with Washington, which has been the Afghan government’s biggest political and military backer.
Afghanistan is one of the few areas in which President Biden’s administration has said the U.S. and China should cooperate, although there has been little visible progress. The Taliban’s visit to Tianjin comes on the heels of a tense high-level U.S.-China meeting in the same city on Monday.
Beijing’s hope for a peace deal between the Taliban and the Afghan government should be aligned with the U.S.’s, some scholars say. “It would be unfortunate if the U.S. interprets this as a great power competition and tries to undermine what China is trying to do,” said Mr. Rubin.
The leadership in Beijing is worried that a more-powerful Taliban would endanger China’s northwest Xinjiang region, where authorities are waging a campaign to more tightly control the Uyghur Muslim ethnic minority. Xinjiang shares a narrow mountainous border with Afghanistan.
Chinese authorities have produced scant evidence of Uyghurs training abroad and returning to carry out attacks inside China. But Beijing has an interest in playing up the dangers of radical Islamic groups abroad and their alleged links to Uyghurs in Xinjiang to justify its treatment of the Uyghur minority within its borders, human-rights advocates say.
Before Wednesday’s meeting, the Taliban already sought to assuage Beijing’s concerns about its historical connections with Uyghur militants in Xinjiang by pledging not to interfere in China’s internal affairs. The Taliban’s Mr. Baradar on Wednesday reiterated that pledge to China’s foreign minister, saying the group would never allow forces to use Afghanistan to endanger China.
The editor of nationalist Chinese tabloid Global Times played down the risks associated with China aligning itself with the Taliban, arguing in an article this month that rejecting the goodwill of the Taliban wouldn’t be conducive to safeguarding China’s national interests and influence in Afghanistan.
“Let’s wait and see,” said Qian Feng, head of research at the National Strategy Institute of Tsinghua University in Beijing. “The Taliban as a whole has never publicly supported Xinjiang issues and never spoken out publicly against China. I think if they keep their word, things will go well.”
—Jonathan Cheng in Beijing contributed to this article.
Write to Chao Deng at Chao.Deng@wsj.com
