Will China’s demands on US block cooperation on Afghanistan?

Afghanistan and the Taliban were on the agenda of phone call between US Secretary of State Blinken and Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi on Sunday
Wang insists demands be heard before China considers working with the US, even though both have an interest in countering extremism and aiding reconstruction

Afghanistan after the US withdrawal

Sarah Zhengin Beijing

Published: 9:30pm, 30 Aug 2021

Why you can trust SCMP

Cooperation between China and the US on Afghanistan and moves to improve ties between Beijing and Washington may be complicated by Beijing’s list of demands on Washington, analysts say.

In a phone call with US Secretary of State Antony Blinken on Sunday, Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi called on the United States to “stop blindly smearing and attacking China” and to repair relations between the two countries, the Chinese foreign ministry said.

“The Chinese side will consider how to engage with the United States based on its attitude towards China,” Wang was quoted as saying. “The US side should take seriously the two lists China has put forward to the United States, as well as the three basic demands as bottom lines that China firmly upholds.”

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken spoke to his Chinese counterpart on Sunday. Photo: AFP

The Chinese demands were issued during US deputy secretary of state Wendy Sherman’s trip to the coastal Chinese city of Tianjin in July. They included requests for the US to lift visa restrictions on Chinese Communist Party members, to end a requirement for Chinese media to register as foreign agents in the US and to drop the extradition request for Chinese tech executive Meng Wanzhou.

During Wang’s meeting with Sherman, he also presented three “bottom lines”: for the US not to subvert Chinese socialism, not to obstruct China’s modernisation and not to violate issues that Beijing considers related to its sovereignty, such as issues around Xinjiang, Hong Kong and Taiwan.

Afghanistan timeline: America’s last days

During the call on Sunday, Blinken said the international community needed to hold the Taliban accountable for the evacuation of Afghans and foreigners, according to a brief US State Department statement. But Wang stressed that all parties needed to “actively guide” the Taliban, and that the US needed to do more to aid Afghanistan and to combat terrorism and violence there.

Chinese analysts said the call showed a continued willingness from both sides to engage despite their tense ties, but that Beijing was signalling to Washington that cooperation on Afghanistan would not happen without movement on its various demands.

The two sides have common interests when it comes to Afghanistan, including in countering extremism and aiding the country’s reconstruction after a nearly two-decade war, but it will be difficult to see how they can come together on the issue, they say.

Liu Weidong, a US affairs expert from the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, said China’s insistence on its lists of wrongdoings and concerns were to signal it was sticking to its previous position from the Tianjin meeting.

“China does not want to see the US lead the direction of the relationship, so Wang Yi is also intending his remarks as a reminder that Beijing has certain bottom lines and that the US will need to show some goodwill before the two sides can talk about other issues,” he said.

According to the foreign ministry statement, Wang and Blinken discussed climate change and Beijing’s protests against the US intelligence community’s inconclusive report on whether Covid-19 had originated from an animal source or was leaked from a lab in Wuhan.

Chinese diplomats and state media have led a particularly vocal campaign on the Covid-19 origins issue, with some pointing to the general scientific consensus that the virus had animal origins while also suggesting without foundation that the virus may be linked to a lab in the US.

Chaos in Afghanistan ‘not only a military failure’ by US: China envoy

There have been some signs of goodwill between the two countries, even though it remains unclear when US President Joe Biden and his Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping will be able to meet for an in-person summit.

The Pentagon held talks with China’s military for the first time under Biden’s administration last week, and the US special climate envoy John Kerry is expected to travel to China next month to announce joint climate change actions in his second such visit in recent months.

Wei Zongyou, a professor at the Centre for American Studies at Fudan University, said the conversation between Wang and Blinken had a more friendly tone overall. Both had interests in preventing the resurgence of terrorism in Afghanistan, seeing the Taliban pursue domestic reconciliation, more tolerant domestic policies and reconstruction, he said.

But he said that if Beijing thought the US was continuing to harm its interests, future cooperation on Afghanistan would be affected.

“China’s position is that the US cannot ask for China’s help on the one hand, and then damage Chinese interests on the other,” he said.

“The Chinese side also believes that since the US already treats China as a strategic rival, and has adopted various preventative measures and checks and balances, then China has to return the favour and cannot blindly make concessions, and will fight when it needs to fight.”

This article appeared in the South China Morning Post print edition as: Experts fear demands on US risk hurting Afghan approach