…on misconceptions around CPEC
Andrew Small discussed China’s role in neighboring Afghanistan with the Danish political news magazine RÆSON.
The last few months have been rife with speculation about Beijing’s willingness to fill the void if American financial and military support for Pakistan were to be curtailed. Far from brimming with strategic potential, the China-Pakistan relationship is now increasingly pushing up against its limits.
On Wednesday, China and Pakistan signed pacts on cooperation in agriculture, healthcare, justice, media, economy, and technology. Both sides also vowed to step up joint efforts against terrorism. But while the relationship between the two countries is strong, it’s shadowed by Beijing’s concerns about Pakistan’s security threat and its impact on Chinese investment and personnel in Pakistan.
„We have moved from a narrative, which lasted for years, that everything was fine when it wasn’t to a narrative that everything is going wrong when it isn’t.” This lament from a former Western official, who, like others quoted in this piece, did not speak for attribution, summed up the frustrations of many in Kabul about the growing disconnect between the political timetables inside and outside the country. The concern is not only that the various transition deadlines are unrealistic, but that their very existence is creating counterproductive pressures that will make them even harder to achieve.
It was once said of Fidel Castro that his „stomach is in Moscow but his heart is in Beijing.“ Now the opposite seems to be true.
China is often accused of supporting a string of despots, nuclear proliferators, and genocidal regimes, shielding them from international pressure and thus reversing progress on human rights and humanitarian principles. But over the last two years, Beijing has been quietly overhauling its policies toward pariah states.
China, which once perceived the West’s condemnation of Mugabe and sanctions against his regime as an economic opportunity, now views its involvement in Zimbabwe as a liability both for its investments and its international reputation.
We are getting used to seeing new faces of Chinese diplomacy and on President Hu Jintao’s latest trip to Africa we will see the unlikeliest of all. In making his most visible push for the settlement of the Darfur crisis, Hu will signal a quiet revolution in Chinese attitudes to sovereignty and noninterference, and position China as the protector of the repressed citizens of the region.
Andrew Small is a Berlin-based senior fellow at the German Marshall Fund of the US. He recently returned to GMF after a period of leave in 2023-2024 to work as the first China fellow at IDEA, the in-house advisory hub for the European Commission president, Ursula von der Leyen
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