China faces an increase in extremist threats in central Asia, US panel is told

Name: Final evacuation flight leaves Kabul, ending 20 years of US presence in Afghanistan
Uploaded: 2022-05-12T22:16:17.000Z
Duration: 1 min 12 s
Description: Final evacuation flight leaves Kabul, ending 20 years of US presence in Afghanistan

Witnesses tell the US-China Economic and Security Review Commission that Beijing’s engagement with governments seeking infrastructure investment may be backfiring

Instead of a chance to fill a power vacuum after the US departure from Afghanistan, China is confronting a rise in animosity and attacks, they say

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Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi (right) meets with Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar, the acting deputy prime minister of the Afghan Taliban’s government, in Kabul on March 24. A US advisory panel on China was told on Thursday that despite Beijing’s ambitions to boost its regional influence, it has confronted rising resistance from extremists. Photo: Xinhua via AP

Robert Delaney

Published: 6:16am, 13 May 2022

Suicide bombings in Afghanistan and Pakistan underscore a rising threat that China faces from extremists in central Asia since the US left the region last year, the leading US advisory panel on China policy was told on Thursday.

Witnesses told the US-China Economic and Security Review Commission (USCC) that instead of a chance for China to fill a power vacuum left after the chaotic US withdrawal from Afghanistan, the animosity that extremists and separatists are directing at China has increased.

Jennifer Brick Murtazashvili of the University of Pittsburgh’s Centre for Governance and Markets said that anger at China in central Asia did not mean the US was welcome: “The US lost so much credibility because of the way it left Afghanistan.” Photo: US-China Economic and Security Review Commission

Raffaello Pantucci, a senior fellow at Singapore’s S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies, said that the Islamic State Khorasan (Isis-K) had identified the perpetrator of the suicide bomb attack on worshippers in a mosque in the Afghan city of Kunduz in October as a Uygur.

The Isis affiliate “was taking note of Chinese support for its enemy the Taliban” and should be seen as “a big red flag”, Pantucci said.

US policymakers are paying more attention to the growth of China’s geopolitical influence through programmes like the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) – which includes the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) – as Washington’s relationship with Beijing has frayed on multiple fronts.

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Final evacuation flight leaves Kabul, ending 20 years of US presence in Afghanistan

The USCC has convened hearings into other areas of concern, including how to deter mainland China’s military from invading Taiwan and countering Chinese cyber espionage and cyberwarfare capabilities.