Taliban: Unloved Neighbors - Why the Chances for China's “New Silk Road” in Afghanistan are slim

A god state as the economic partner of the Silk Road Initiative?

In theory, Afghanistan has great potential for Beijing.

But even pragmatic China finds it difficult to cope with the Taliban in practice.

• Afghanistan is of great interest to China - there is potential for the “New Silk Road” and valuable raw materials are stored in the ground.

• But so far the security situation has not allowed Beijing to invest - projects are on hold.

• The future emirate of the Taliban also does not offer the necessary environment for secure investments.

• This text appears at the portals of IPPEN.MEDIA as part of a cooperation with the

  China.Table Professional Briefing

  - publishes first had him

  China.Table

  on 19 August 2021st

Beijing / Berlin - China would like to integrate Afghanistan into its own foreign trade system if possible: The New Silk Road *, also known as the

Belt and Road Initiative

(BRI). From the Chinese point of view, the country's potential is fundamentally great. In the soil there are said to be fabulous deposits of coveted industrial metals, the rare earths. There are also copper, gold and iron. Even lithium can be extracted there, the basic material for the batteries in e-cars and cell phones. Occurrences of natural gas and oil have also been proven. Properly used, these raw materials could make both countries really rich.

Then there is the geographical location. Afghanistan * connects South and Central Asia as well as West and East Asia. It could be the hub of the Silk Road trade if it had the necessary ports, roads and train routes. Building it in turn would create growth and jobs for years to come, both for China * and for Afghanistan itself. An assessment often heard from the early days of the BRI has therefore been that it could integrate Afghanistan economically in a way that was previously thought to be impossible .

The high potential is now also the reason for China to put a good face on the bad game * and court the Taliban.

But experts doubt whether a beneficial economic partnership can really be built with their regime.

"The Chinese leadership emphasizes how important Afghanistan is geographically to them," says Francesca Ghiretti, Silk Road expert at the China research institute Merics.

"But if profound cooperation is to come about, the Taliban would have to change their style of government."

Afghanistan: The prerequisites for China's economic engagement are lacking

China needs the following framework conditions for meaningful cooperation within the framework of the BRI - and almost none of them exist:

• Stability:

  The employees of Chinese institutions must be protected before large-scale engagement is possible. The retention and return of the investments must also be ensured. "Chinese investors have recently shown themselves to be less willing to take risks anyway," observes Ghiretti. However, disagreement between groups in the country, a lack of a legal system, a culture of violence in society and rampant corruption create an intolerable level of instability.

• An investment-driven development model:

  The first Taliban emirate in the 1990s had no development policy worth mentioning, and the economy made practically no progress in this phase.

  The main source of income was the sale of opium.

  Religious activity took precedence over economic activity.

• A central state as a point of contact:

  The Taliban are more of a network of different groups.

  China likes to build large-scale projects worth billions - but there is no government as a point of contact for planning them.

  There is also a lack of national unity for the extraction of natural resources.

  Instead, there would be a dispute over the distribution of the profits.

• A functioning banking sector:

  The strict interpretation of the Koran severely limits the possibilities for lending.

  The partnership model of the New Silk Road, however, provides for large loans to be granted for project financing.

  These will be forwarded and passed on on site.

  Expert Ghiretti expects, however, that the Taliban will find pragmatic solutions here if there is a will.

China in Afghanistan: Investments so far rather unsuccessful

As China's engagement in Africa and elsewhere shows, Beijing's demands on the form of rule of the target countries are generally low. But even if there are no moral concerns about working with the Taliban, there are numerous practical hurdles to investing in Afghanistan. Some of these do not even go back to the Islamic warriors of God, but are structural. This can be seen when looking at the existing Chinese projects in the country:

• The copper mine in Mes Aynak:

  The two Chinese companies Metallurgical Corporation of China and Jiangxi Copper received a license to mine the precious metal in 2008. Among other things, copper is the basic material for power lines and electric motors, but also for fittings. China's demand for the expensive metal is increasing and increasing. The mine in Afghanistan could be the second largest of its kind in the world. But to this day nothing has been funded at the location southeast of Kabul. There was a perpetual contract dispute between the Chinese actors and the government in Kabul over the processing of the copper. However, Ghiretti considers the general lack of stability and security to be the main reason for failure. And this despite the fact that the Taliban have promised not to carry out any attacks on the project.  

• A coal-fired power station and a railway line between the ports of Hairtan and Torkham:

  they were never built

  either

  .

  Chinese investors questioned its necessity because related projects never got off the ground - including copper mining and processing in Mes Aynak.

• The oil field in Amu Darya:

  When China National Petroleum (CNPC) secured access to the large deposit, it was considered a success for China's raw materials policy.

  It is near Mazar-e Sharif.

  The contract partner was the Watan Group, which is controlled by the family of ex-President Hamid Karzai.

  But even the good relationships were of no use.

  There were attacks on the plants from the start, and a refinery that was actually needed was never built.

In reality, therefore, the most important Afghan export goods to China were not high-tech metals, but nuts, cotton thread, dried fruits and animal hair.

In practice, the specific economic interests in Afghanistan are therefore "minimal", says Andrew Small from the European Council on Foreign Relations.

That is why China - quite uncharacteristically - has not even started to create massive transport links through the mountains.

China: Taliban are difficult to bear domestically

At the same time, however, the projects show that China had established constructive relations with the Afghan state even during the time of Western intervention.

"They got along with the existing government and signaled their cooperation," said Ghiretti.

China had good relations with both sides, the Taliban and the official government until the weekend.

The largest investments in the country also came from China at the time of the Western military presence

.

The idea from the beginning was to have a foot in the door in any case.

Regional experts such as Raffaello Pantucci from the Rajaratnam School of International Studies in Singapore therefore reject the allegation that has often been made in recent days that China wants to fill the gap left by the US withdrawal.

The Beijing government has another problem with the Taliban.

Images of wild men wielding guns and now supposed to be China's new partners can hardly be sold internally as the great success of the New Silk Road.

And while the government believes it has to re-educate the already tolerant Uighurs en masse in the northwest region of Xinjiang *, does it want to cooperate with radical warriors in a neighboring country?

There is an all too obvious contradiction here that cannot be easily explained away, says regional expert Ghiretti.

Therefore, at the legendary meeting in Tianjin *, Foreign Minister Wang Yi apparently insisted that the Taliban create a more acceptable image.

It is highly questionable whether such a wish will have any effect.

Taliban victory in Afghanistan: not the desired result for Beijing

So China is probably extremely unhappy with the Taliban as its new neighbor. “Your win was definitely not the result you wanted,” said Ghiretti. They are comparatively unsuitable as constructive - or even compliant - partners within the framework of the BRI. So they are probably of less use to President Xi Jinping's major prestige project than a secular government would have done. "Overall, it is unlikely that China will invest heavily in this area in the foreseeable future," said Ghiretti.

Overall, China is likely to view developments in Afghanistan with suspicion. In almost every respect, a divine state is a worse neighbor than a secular state would be. A breeding ground for terror with a land bridge into one's own territory would be a real nightmare. After all, China has created a considerable potential for unrest through its restrictive policy against the Muslims in Xinjiang *. The leadership already believes that they have to keep the situation under control with police-state methods. The China Institute of Contemporary International Relations already fears that the chaos in Afghanistan could spill over to Tajikistan, Uzbekistan or even Pakistan.

The barriers to Chinese investment are a shame for a country that largely lives in poverty and persists in a premodern economy.

In such an environment in particular, development strategies sponsored by China could make a huge difference in a short space of time.

That would then also promise a corresponding return for Chinese investors.

Other infrastructure providers, for example Germany, would also benefit from a growing economy and flourishing large-scale projects.

Siemens Energy had already signed contracts for the electrification of the country.

Under the Taliban, however, the chances of such a course are initially slim.

By Finn Mayer-Kuckuk

Finn Mayer-Kuckuk has been

editor

-in-

chief of the

China.Table

briefing format

since May 2021

.

Before that, he was the capital correspondent for the Federal Press Conference in Berlin and China correspondent for the

Handelsblatt

and the DuMont Group,

among others

.

Among other things, he reports on the interaction between the Chinese and German economies, digitization and IT, as well as China trends in the German capital.

This article appeared on August 19, 2021 in the “China.Table Professional Briefing” newsletter - as part of a cooperation, it is now also available to readers of the IPPEN.MEDIA portals.

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