2021年8月23日，上外中东研究所范鸿达教授就阿富汗局势接受新加坡Straits Times采访，全文如下：
As the US withdraws from Afghanistan, China is left to deal with the fallout
As the Taleban advanced on the Afghan capital Kabul last week, one Chinese businessman's account of doing business in the country made its rounds on Chinese social media.
Mr Yu Minghui had entered Afghanistan in the wake of the United States invasion in 2001, hoping to capitalise on reconstruction efforts. In the 20 years since, he has set up a steel plant and an industrial centre called Chinatown which houses factories that make products for the Afghan market.
But recent events have put that growing business empire at risk.
Most of the other Chinese businessmen have left. But we have plans and contracts with our Afghan partners. Now we can only take one step at a time, Mr Yu wrote in an article on WeChat.
His fortunes show just how China and Chinese businessmen like him have benefited from the stability that US troops have brought to Afghanistan.
All that is up in the air, with the US military pulling out of the country after 20 years of occupation and the Taleban back in control.
Last week, the militant group announced the establishment of the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan, after it took control of Kabul.
As the world watched the unfolding chaos – such as scenes of Afghans scrambling to get on military planes on the tarmac and trying to hang on as they took off – Chinese state media, officials and netizens celebrated what was no doubt a severe blow to Washington's international credibility, pointing to the rotten mess left in the wake of America's hurried withdrawal.
But the schadenfreude masks very real concerns.
The leaders in Beijing know that the US might have left, but its rotten mess in Afghanistan is one that China now has to reckon with.
Instability at the border
In the past week, Chinese officials have been loud and vocal over how they feel about Washington's actions.
Foreign Minister Wang Yi lectured US Secretary of State Antony Blinken in a phone call last Monday, saying the unfolding events proved that it is difficult to gain a foothold in a country with a completely different history, culture and national conditions by mechanically copying foreign models.
Such lessons deserve serious reflection, Mr Wang said, according to the Chinese statement of the call.
The comments offer a sense of the frustration that Beijing is feeling, Mr Raffaello Pantucci, a fellow at the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies in Singapore, told The Straits Times.
The Chinese are genuinely irritated that the end result of this big American experiment is a country that's unstable on their border, and now potentially being led by an organisation that is not exactly one they would love to see in charge, said Mr Pantucci.
First, Beijing is worried that the Taleban will allow militants from the East Turkestan Islamic Movement (ETIM) to use Afghanistan as a base to launch attacks on China.
Beijing considers ETIM to be a terrorist organisation that seeks to foment an independence movement in its restive Xinjiang region, which shares a narrow border with Afghanistan.
There is also the Tehrik-i-Taleban Pakistan, also known as the Pakistani Taleban, which was behind a suicide bomb attack in the city of Quetta, targeting a hotel where the Chinese ambassador was staying.
Second, China is concerned that the instability in Afghanistan could spread – the Taleban's success could inspire militants in Afghanistan's neighbours, including Pakistan and other Central Asian countries, where China has greater economic interests.
The China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) – a more-than US$60 billion (S$82 billion) investment plan under China's Belt and Road Initiative aimed at connecting western China to the Gwadar sea port in southern Pakistan – offers Beijing critical access to the Indian Ocean.
China's main concern is whether Afghanistan can achieve stability and peace under the leadership of the Taleban, and whether the Taleban will make a break with terrorist forces including the ETIM, said Professor Fan Hongda from the Middle East Studies Institute at Shanghai International Studies University.
The former is related to regional security, while the latter is related to China's important national interests, he said.
Just last month, a bus shuttling Chinese and Pakistani workers to a CPEC project exploded, killing 13 people. Beijing has called the incident a bomb attack.
Two weeks later, on the same day that Taleban political chief Abdul Ghani Baradar met Mr Wang in Tianjin, a car carrying Chinese engineers was shot at in Karachi.
At the Tianjin meeting, Mr Wang had pressed the Taleban to make a clean break with terrorist organisations such as ETIM.
The same Taleban?
The question being asked in Beijing is what kind of Taleban is the world now dealing with.
When the Taleban was in power 20 years ago, their internal and external policies were very extreme. They destroyed the Bamiyan Buddhas, cultural relics in the museums, and were very harsh towards women, said former Chinese ambassador to Iran Hua Liming, referring to the 6th-century Buddha statues carved into the cliff side of the Bamiyan valley in Afghanistan.
Twenty years later, they have new leaders and the global situation has changed. But we are still watching to see if they will stick to their old policies.
The Taleban first emerged in the 1990s after Soviet forces pulled out of Afghanistan, and ruled the country from 1996 to 2001 under a strict version of the syariah or Islamic law.
During its first time in power, punishments like stoning were meted out, women were stopped from working and required to wear burqas, and men had to grow beards.
Radical groups like Al-Qaeda were also allowed to gain a foothold in the country.
Taleban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid said during a press conference last week that the group intends to establish an Islamic and inclusive government, and that the rights of women would be guaranteed under the framework of Islam.
But any new Afghanistan government will be one in which the Taleban has absolute influence, said Prof Fan.
And while signs indicate that the Taleban is unlikely to be as extreme as it was – in recent years, the militant group has set up a political office in Qatar and engaged in negotiations with countries including China, the US, Russia, India and Pakistan – doubts remain over its pledges.
Awkward situation
Shanghai Institutes for International Studies senior fellow Liu Zongyi said in an interview with Chinese media that he did not think the Taleban's basic ideology has changed.
Their current posturing may just be a tactical ploy, and the Islamic fundamentalism they have been pursuing may not have changed much, Dr Liu said.
Despite China's requests, the Taleban would likely continue to see ETIM as brothers from the same religion.
Dr Liu added: They may, at best, not allow the ETIM to engage in anti-China operations on Afghan territory, but to get them to hand over ETIM elements to China will be very difficult.
Even so, Beijing has been pragmatic. After the Taleban seized control, Beijing has been encouraging the group to live up to its promises, dangling the prospect of economic development if it does so.
Some people have been saying they don't trust the Afghan Taleban. I want to say that nothing stays unchanged... We should look at both the past and the present. We need to not only listen to what they say, but also look at what they do, said Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Hua Chunying last week.
At the same time, China has also been actively engaging other countries in the region on the issue of Afghanistan. President Xi Jinping phoned his Iranian and Iraqi counterparts last Wednesday, while Mr Wang spoke to top diplomats from Pakistan, Turkey, Russia and Britain.
The flurry of phone conversations in the past week shows that Beijing knows the situation remains volatile – already, there are reports of a mujahideen resistance in the Panjshir valley north of Kabul.
Should there be an armed resistance or civil war against Taleban rule, the conflict could pull other countries and powers into Afghanistan – something that China surely does not want in its backyard.
Above all, it will not be lost on Beijing that America's withdrawal of troops from Afghanistan will mean the resources and assets that Washington has freed up can be focused on confronting China. As US President Joe Biden put it last week: Our true strategic competitors – China and Russia – would love nothing more than for the United States to continue to funnel billions of dollars in resources and attention into stabilising Afghanistan indefinitely.
The current situation leaves Beijing in a difficult position: having to deal with an unstable Afghanistan, as well as an America no longer encumbered by an intractable war.
Mr Fu Xiaoqiang, vice-president of the China Institutes of Contemporary International Relations, a think-tank affiliated with the Ministry of State Security, wrote in an article on the institute's Weibo account that any response must take into consideration China's competition with the US.
China must rationally allocate resources, act decisively to deal with any extremist elements, act according to its capabilities to turn the situation around, and work together with others to address the chaos, he said.
Neatly put, but in messy and unpredictable Afghanistan, perhaps easier said than done.
来源：The Straits Times
（本文观点仅为作者或被访者个人观点，不代表本研究机构立场）
