China will not fill U.S. void in Afghanistan: official

[Raphael]

China will not fill U.S. void in Afghanistan: official| Reuters

(Reuters) - China does not seek to fill a void left in Afghanistan by the withdrawal of U.S. troops but will play a "huge" commercial role in helping rebuild the country, a newly appointed Chinese special envoy said on Monday.

China, which is connected to Afghanistan by a narrow, almost impassable mountain corridor, has been quietly preparing for more responsibility there after the bulk of U.S.-led troops pull out by the end of this year.

Some Western officials have said China is likely to emerge as a strategic player in Afghanistan but Sun Yuxi, who was appointed special representative to the country on Friday, said China's involvement would remain largely commercial.

"This idea about filling a void after the withdrawal of troops, I think it doesn't exist," Sun told reporters in Beijing before heading to Afghanistan on Tuesday for talks.

Some Western officials have criticized China for piggy-backing off the U.S.-led security operation that has eliminated an al Qaeda enclave on China's door-step and opened up Afghanistan's resources to international exploitation.

China's commitment to Afghan reconstruction since the ouster of a hardline Islamist regime in 2001 has been a relatively paltry $250 million and its security support has been mostly limited to counter-narcotics training.

But a consortium of Chinese investors is involved in a landmark $3 billion deal to produce copper in Afghanistan although work on the deposit, among the world's largest, has been largely halted by insurgent attacks.

Sun said China looked forward to much more economic involvement which he said was essential for stability.

"In the long-term, an even greater portion of our cooperation and participation in economic rebuilding will be carried out in a commercial way. This amount will be huge," he said.

"Preserving Afghanistan's stability is not a matter of adding troops but of helping Afghanistan to quickly rebuild. We hope to see a rapid decrease in weaponry and a rapid increase in wealth."

'HIGHLIGHTS'

Sun, a veteran diplomat with experience of Afghanistan since the late 1970s, said U.S.-China cooperation on Afghanistan had been one of the "very bright highlights" in ties between the powers, whose relations are often testy.

He welcomed the withdrawal of the bulk of U.S.-led troops and also welcomed the expected maintenance of a small, residual U.S. force.

"The new Afghan government should mainly be responsible for security. The United States is preparing to withdraw, and we welcome that," he said.

"We also welcome the United States retaining some military bases to observe for a time and cooperate to help the Afghan people and government fight terrorism."

A major worry for China is that ethnic Uighur separatist militants from its western Xinjiang region will take advantage if Afghanistan again descends into chaos.

Uighur fighters are believed to be based in militant strongholds in ungoverned stretches of the Afghan-Pakistani border.

Sun said he did not know how many were there but there had been hundreds before the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan to oust the Taliban in 2001.

"At the peak, there was about 1,000 people training there," Sun said, adding that many were killed or captured in fighting but most had fled.

China says Islamist militants were behind a spate of recent attacks there in which about 200 people have been killed.

Exiled Uighur groups and human rights activists say repressive government policies in Xinjiang, including controls on Islam and on Uighur culture, have provoked unrest. China dismisses that.

 

[LeveragedBuyout]

"We also welcome the United States retaining some military bases to observe for a time and cooperate to help the Afghan people and government fight terrorism."

According to several Chinese users here, it's not possible that a Chinese official would say such a thing. After all, isn't China's strategy to push the US out of Asia?

Perhaps that was a bit too sarcastic, so on to serious matters. This will help Afghanistan, but China should be aware that this model (i.e. the China-Africa development model based on exporting Chinese labor to extract natural resources, and build infrastructure to more efficiently extract those resources) can result in deep resentment. Unlike Africa, Afghanistan borders China, and can thus export its radicalism to China. It is yet to be seen if China has designed a more mutually beneficial model that will avert such resentment.

It also couldn't hurt if China did contribute to Afghan security through tangible means, although it sounds like that's not going to happen.

 

[Raphael]

According to several Chinese users here, it's not possible that a Chinese official would say such a thing. After all, isn't China's strategy to push the US out of Asia?

Has anyone made a blanket statement like that? I think most Chinese want to eject US influence where it has a destabilizing influence, i.e. where it incites certain countries on our periphery to disrespect our territorial sovereignty, on the tacit understanding that there is US backup waiting in the shadows to meet any blowback for their provocations. But you're welcome to stay in Afghanistan for as long as you wish .

Perhaps that was a bit too sarcastic, so on to serious matters. This will help Afghanistan, but China should be aware that this model (i.e. the China-Africa development model based on exporting Chinese labor to extract natural resources, and build infrastructure to more efficiently extract those resources) can result in deep resentment. Unlike Africa, Afghanistan borders China, and can thus export its radicalism to China. It is yet to be seen if China has designed a more mutually beneficial model that will avert such resentment.

Afghanistan has nothing to offer other than natural resources at the moment. In their current starting stage, they need the export revenue to use as capital to branch into more advanced industries. And resentment towards us in Africa is vastly overstated. Africans are very positive on China, certainly more than North Americans and Europeans are.

It also couldn't hurt if China did contribute to Afghan security through tangible means, although it sounds like that's not going to happen.

No. That would be a violation of our non-interference policy, and their sovereignty. Maybe if our troops came as part of some UN peacekeeping force.

 

[LeveragedBuyout]

Has anyone made a blanket statement like that? I think most Chinese want to eject US influence where it has a destabilizing influence, i.e. where it incites certain countries on our periphery to disrespect our territorial sovereignty, on the tacit understanding that there is US backup waiting in the shadows to meet any blowback for their provocations. But you're welcome to stay in Afghanistan for as long as you wish .

I don't mean to pick on just one user, but @Genesis is one of the only Chinese users left that are not on my ignore list who have called for China to push the US out of Asia:

Chinese tycoon to feed 1,000 poor Americans

As far as a "destabilizing influence," isn't that in the eye of the beholder? I don't see the need to rehash old arguments, but in this thread (American Propaganda: China will Reclaim Siberia | Page 4) you argued that the US provides implicit support to SE Asian countries, which encourages them to fight with China. The other side of that coin, of course, is that China foments instability by taking unilateral action in claiming territory under dispute (yes, to get it out of the way, I acknowledge that Japan has done the same, but China has done it more frequently with more nations).

In other words, China wants to eject the US from areas where its influence counters Chinese influence, i.e. Asia.

Afghanistan has nothing to offer other than natural resources at the moment. In their current starting stage, they need the export revenue to use as capital to branch into more advanced industries. And resentment towards us in Africa is vastly overstated. Africans are very positive on China, certainly more than North Americans and Europeans are.

I agree that Afghanistan has virtually nothing other than natural resources at the moment, but Afghanistan could easily take the development path of virtually every other Asian economy, and start with low-level manufacturing (e.g. textiles) and work up the manufacturing ladder from there. China could help this process by outsourcing manufacturing in which it is no longer cost-competitive to Afghanistan, but Afghanistan's development isn't China's goal, of course. China will do what is best for China, and I respect that. However, extracting resources flies in the face of the statement from Sun:

"In the long-term, an even greater portion of our cooperation and participation in economic rebuilding will be carried out in a commercial way. This amount will be huge," he said.

"Preserving Afghanistan's stability is not a matter of adding troops but of helping Afghanistan to quickly rebuild. We hope to see a rapid decrease in weaponry and a rapid increase in wealth."

Hopefully you will agree that resource-based economies have a terrible record of widespread economic development, and instead foster corruption, and even worse, warlord-ism (see: Africa). Building an economy based on extracting natural resources will thus, at best, do nothing to help the locals, and at worst, foster increased instability. Again, I don't expect China to explicitly say that it will maximize value for itself and screw the locals, but it would be nice if China didn't engage in these schemes while simultaneously accusing the US of acting out of purely malevolent motives.

No. That would be a violation of our non-interference policy, and their sovereignty. Maybe if our troops came as part of some UN peacekeeping force.

How will China secure its business interests in Afghanistan, then?