china relationship between afghanistan

 China's investment in Afghanistan developed an important role.

 

The signing of a multimillion-dollar, 25-year oil extraction contract by a Chinese company last month marked the first big foreign investment in Taliban-run Afghanistan. Despite China's dubious track record of closing transactions, experts are cautiously confident that the project would create jobs and generate cash.

 

The Amu Darya basin, which stretches between central Asian nations and Afghanistan and covers an area of about 4.5 square kilometres, is home to the Taliban. On January 6, the Taliban signed a contract to extract oil from the basin with Xinjiang Central Asia Petroleum and Gas Company (CAPEIC), a subsidiary of the state-owned China National Petroleum Company (CNPC) (1.73 square miles). According to the agreement, $150 million will be invested in Afghanistan in the first year and $540 million over the next three, a Taliban spokeswoman announced on Twitter.

 

The Taliban will be a 20 per cent partner in the transaction, which will subsequently be increased to 75 per cent, according to spokesperson Zabihullah Mujahid, who also stated that the daily rate of oil extraction will be between 1,000 and 20,000 tonnes. One of many people watching the situation with a glimmer of hope is Abdul Jalil Jumrainy, a sector expert and the former director general of the Afghan Petroleum Authority at the Ministry of Mines and Petroleum.

 

Jumrainy stated that this project "may be a source of cash that provides economic relief - an opportunity for Afghans to benefit from their resources" in light of the current state of affairs and the struggles his people are facing. The creation of jobs and the use of some Afghan skills, he added, "even if a large portion of it goes to the government, is a positive thing."

 

Yet, given the pariah position of the Taliban administration, the agreement has some political significance, according to Jiayi Zhou, a researcher at SIPRI, an independent conflict research centre based in Sweden and an expert in China geopolitics. But it's also not entirely unexpected: For the past year, Chinese businesses had openly communicated with the Taliban to renegotiate and resume mining and oil contracts agreed to in 2008 and 2011. The result of those discussions is essentially this agreement, she said. He also noted that the Taliban had been negotiating to restart their economic cooperation initiatives with several other neighbours.

 

She noted that such avenues of economic interaction between Afghanistan and its neighbours have remained open, saying that "there is a general consensus among Afghanistan's neighbours that there is no alternative to some form of engagement with the Taliban, if only for reasons of ensuring regional stability and security." Zhou continued, "I would at least partially contextualise Chinese investments as being part of that larger narrative.

 

According to Omar Sadr, an academic from Afghanistan and former lecturer at the American University of Afghanistan, China's relationship with the Taliban is more motivated by security concerns than by economic ones.

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