The recent clashes between Pakistan and Afghanistan have paused after a ceasefire. While the agreement was directly mediated by Qatar and Turkiye, several regional states supported the ceasefire, including China. Unlike past attempts to assuage Afghanistan-Pakistan mistrust, however, China’s facilitation this time appears quieter, underscoring Beijing’s subtle yet definitive stance on Afghanistan.
Beijing’s Afghanistan policy is less about achieving an improbable, long-lasting peace and more about managing volatility on China’s western front. In essence, what China seeks is “managed instability,” a fragile balance between containment and chaos.
Beijing appears to have realized that sustainable peace in Afghanistan will require more effort than it can spare. An arrangement that keeps terror under check, prevents Western oversight, and protects Chinese citizens and investment is more attractive than any other policy option. This realization has become even more acute after the U.S. show of interest in a return to Bagram, in part to keep a check on China’s nuclear installations in Xinjiang. In this calculus, Beijing’s definition of “peace” in Afghanistan does not mean pluralism, but predictability.
Like Pakistan and other regional states, China’s policy toward Afghanistan has been shaped by a singular yet important security concern: the fear that Afghanistan could become a breeding ground for militancy, which threatens China’s western frontiers. This concern is not new to Chinese decisionmakers, who have, over time, viewed Afghanistan as more of a potential liability than a geopolitical prize – a haven for drug traffickers and transnational terrorists, including militants associated with East Turkestan Islamic Movement (ETIM), Tehreek-e Taliban Pakistan (TTP), Islamic State Khorasan Province (ISKP), and al-Qaida. Throughout the years, China has sought only one guarantee from whoever governs Kabul: the prevention of terror exports to Chinese soil. For that goal, Beijing has engaged with all powerful stakeholders in Afghanistan – directly or through facilitators – since the mid-1990s.
China’s raison d’être and modus operandi have been unchanged after the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan in 2021. Beijing has maintained a direct yet discreet connection with the Taliban leadership, signaling the need to insulate Xinjiang from the turbulence of Afghanistan. Weeks before the Taliban takeover, Foreign Minister Wang Yi welcomed a Taliban delegation and called the group an important political and military force. Yet this was not an indication of a doctrinal change in Beijing’s foreign policy. Chinese officials reaffirmed Beijing’s longstanding view on curbing the three evils of terrorism, separatism, and extremism.
The change occurred only in the management strategy. Beijing adopted a policy of “engagement without entrapment”: expanding diplomatic engagements while avoiding deep economic and security commitments. For China, the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan did not create any significant takeover opportunity but left an obligation to prevent the collapse of the Afghan regime and a spillover of instability. Its post-2021 diplomacy, therefore, remained cautious, conditional, and selective.
Beijing, for instance, enhanced engagements with the Taliban regime and accepted its envoy but regularly highlighted its shortcomings at the United Nations and multilateral forums, including the foreign ministers’ quadrilateral dialogues. The number of travelers from the Chinese side increased after 2021, but the embassy in Kabul frequently shared travel warnings for Chinese nationals in Afghanistan. Beijing appreciated the Taliban’s effort to bring peace and stability to Afghanistan, but it was unreceptive to the Taliban’s enthusiasm to use the Wakhan corridor as a trading and cross-border traveling hub. Thanks to this cautious approach, even four years after the Taliban takeover, the two key projects – Mes Aynak and Amu Darya oil basin – that China undertook years ago have faced delays, causing rift between the two sides.
Incentives for compliance are a major part of Chinese policy toward Afghanistan, as evident from the agreements on the extension of the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) to Afghanistan. China believes that its trade, aid, and investment overtures are mechanisms of discipline rather than generosity, meant to induce behavioral moderation in the Taliban regime.
China’s key objective is to have a stable neighborhood without hostile elements that can threaten the regime. For that reason, Beijing abhors the idea of a U.S. presence at Bagram – this time only to counter China. The U.S. president specifically said he wanted to return to the Afghan base due to its proximity to China’s nuclear facilities. However, China also realizes that there is no quick fix to the Taliban problem. Their exclusionary rule and support for militant groups that threaten the interests of China, and its close ally, Pakistan, are likely to continue. Nationalist rhetoric and limited military engagements on borders with Iran, Central Asian states, and especially Pakistan are also to occur sporadically.
Yet for the Chinese government, all of these options are preferable to an Afghanistan akin to that of the late 1990s or one that helps adversaries challenge regime security in Beijing.
