By Omid Sharafat
On the fourth anniversary of the Taliban’s return to power, its relationship with neighbouring countries — including China — have moved toward a kind of strategic alliance.
In December 2023, China was the first country to accept the Taliban’s ambassador, with President Xi Jinping personally receiving his credentials. Following their capture of Kabul, the Taliban had called China their most important partner, and emphasized that they were counting on its support for Afghanistan’s reconstruction. Alongside Russia, Iran, and Pakistan, China was among the few countries that kept its embassy open and continued diplomatic activities in Afghanistan after the Taliban’s return to power in 2021.
Over the past four years, bilateral relations in both diplomatic and economic spheres have deepened. Despite being on international sanctions lists, Taliban officials made frequent appearances in Beijing and other Chinese cities to attend bilateral and multilateral meetings. In March 2022, Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi visited Kabul, where he met Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar, the Taliban’s deputy economic chief, and Amir Khan Muttaqi, the group’s foreign minister.
Another milestone in bilateral relations was the January 2023 signing of a US$540 million contract between the Taliban and the Xinjiang Central Asia Petroleum and Gas Company (all figures in US$). In November 2023, a freight train from China arrived in Mazar-e-Sharif — the first such train movement between the two countries since the COVID-19 pandemic.
In 2023, economic and trade exchanges between the two countries reached $1.3 billion, up a remarkable 125 percent compared to previous years. Last year, Chinese exports to Afghanistan were a reported $1.54 billion. The Taliban’s Ministry of Industry and Commerce also announced that trade volume between the two countries reached $541 million in the first seven months of the current year.
Helping trade between the two countries, China granted full customs exemptions for goods exported from Afghanistan to China, as of December 1, 2024. In the mining sector, China reopened the Mes Aynak copper mine in July 2024.
Alongside other neighbours of Afghanistan, China has worked to elevate the Taliban government’s regional and international standing, even acting as mediators to reduce border tensions between the Taliban and Pakistan. At the same time, though it accepts a Taliban ambassador, China has not officially recognized the Taliban. It is tying such formal recognition to regional consensus about the regime and the Taliban’s efforts to eradicate terrorism from Afghanistan.
Yet, given the ideological differences between China and the Taliban, especially the regime’s strict enforcement of sharia law, one question arises: What role does China envision for itself in Afghanistan, four years after the withdrawal of the United States and NATO?
China’s role in the new Afghanistan
The withdrawal of the United States and the Taliban’s return to power transformed the region’s geopolitics and China’s role within it. During the 20 years of the republic, Afghanistan’s and the region’s geopolitical future was tied to the U.S. and NATO. As a result, China’s role was marginal, limited mainly to mining investments and some aid for Afghanistan’s infrastructure development.
With the departure of Western forces from Afghanistan and Russia occupied with its war in Ukraine, China is filling the geopolitical vacuum in the region and is now seen as the leading country shaping its future. Now that it’s free to act without interference from rival great powers, China supports and guides the Taliban government in ways that advance its strategic interests.
As part of the growing trend of trade and economic exchanges between the two countries, China is investing in development projects such as the Nila Bagh township project in Kabul, the construction of the Kabul Industrial Park, and the resumption of Afghanistan’s pine nut exports.
Though ,Afghanistan’s exports to China have not seen significant growth, according to data from China’s General Administration of Customs, China’s exports to and investment in Afghanistan have risen sharply. In one recent case, a Chinese company proposed a $10 billion investment in Afghanistan’s lithium sector in April 2023.
Another important development is China’s willingness to integrate Afghanistan into the Belt and Road Initiative — potentially as a gateway for the project into Central Asia. Nooruddin Azizi, the Taliban’s acting minister of industry and commerce, attended the third Belt and Road Forum in October 2023, a move seen as a first step toward Afghanistan’s integration into the initiative. In addition, progress is being made on the Wakhan Corridor road project, which will provide China with direct land access to Central Asia through Afghanistan. According to Taliban Ministry of Rural Development officials, phases one and two of this 120-kilometre project are set to be completed by the end of the current Afghan calendar year.
China and Pakistan have also expressed readiness to integrate Afghanistan into the China–Pakistan Economic Corridor. They announced that intention at a trilateral meeting of the foreign ministers of the three countries in May 2025 in China. The current era of China–Taliban relations dates back to 2011, when then-U.S. President Barack Obama announced the eventual withdrawal of Western forces from Afghanistan after the killing of Osama bin Laden. Since then, China began reassessing its role in Afghanistan and the region and started quiet talks with the Taliban. In 2015, China acted as a mediator between the Taliban and the former Afghan government.
lAlthough China adopted a neutral stance on Afghanistan during Taliban-U.S. negotiations, it maintained its ties with the Taliban. Sources in the former Afghan government claimed that China was providing the Taliban with weapons and ammunition. With such a history, it came as no surprise that China refrained from closing its embassy when the Taliban took control of Kabul in August 2021. This move reflected both trust in the Taliban — based on behind-the-scenes relations — and offered tacit support for the Taliban regime.
The Taliban’s 20-year war with the U.S., the presence of most of its senior leaders on Western sanctions lists, and the relative security under Taliban rule are among the factors encouraging China to engage positively with the group and to play a new role in Afghanistan and the region.
Terrorism: A challenge to expanding China–Taliban relations
The Taliban’s long-standing, complex, and jihadist ideology-based relations with terrorist groups such as al-Qaeda, Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), the Turkistan Islamic Movement (also known as the East Turkestan Islamic Party), and even the Balochistan Liberation Army, pose a serious challenge to China in engaging with the group.
By moving Uyghur militants away from China’s border, the Taliban have temporarily eased some of Beijing’s concerns. However, Afghanistan’s 90-kilometre border with China’s Muslim-majority Xinjiang province — and the fact that the Taliban allowed Afghanistan-based Uyghur fighters to conduct operations in China in the 1990s— must fuel Chinese fears about the spread of jihadist movements in the region.
The participation of Uyghur militants and other jihadists in the Taliban’s capture of Kabul points to the continuation of strategic ties between the Taliban and Islamist movements in the region. At present, the Taliban’s influence over the Uyghur movement could be a tactical measure, or it could be used as leverage against China.
Thus, although the decline of Western influence in Afghanistan offers China a valuable opportunity to play a prominent role, the Taliban’s shared ideology with terrorist groups — including the Turkistan Islamic Movement — could become a significant obstacle to deepening bilateral relations in the longer term.
China’s position on human rights and women’s rights
As outlined in some detail earlier, China’s policy in Taliban-ruled Afghanistan prioritizes economic interests over human rights concerns. China seeks to expand its economic activities and implement its projects in Afghanistan and the wider region. From Beijing’s perspective, the Taliban’s repressive security apparatus provides a suitable environment for safeguarding China’s economic interests and those of the entire region.
Therefore, unlike Western countries, which condition engagement with the Taliban on the group’s respect for human rights — especially women’s rights — China has not made such conditions. Instead, it has tied its engagement and support to the Taliban’s suppression or containment of Uyghur militants.
Although Chinese feminists criticize the Taliban’s policies in this regard, state media in China strive to present a softer image of the group, portraying it as supportive of Afghan athletes. Chinese state media and officials often remain silent on the Taliban’s violence against women.
Omid Sharafat is the pseudonym of a former university professor in Kabul and a researcher of international relations.
