foir_3880

FOI-R--3880--SE
8 China, Central Asia and the future of
Afghanistan
John Rydqvist and Ye Hailin
This chapter discusses three key factors shaping China’s policy towards Central
Asia’s republics and Afghanistan. The first is the threat of transnational
extremism affecting western China. The second is the importance of energy
imports and the prospect of future cross continent trade through the region. The
third factor is the continued importance of China’s western neighbourhood for
Beijing’s wider geostrategic calculus. Recent developments look bright for
China. The US will not remain in large numbers in the region. The threat of
strategic encirclement in the west will not materialize. Afghanistan remains a
challenge, but one China thinks it can manage. Those in the international
community that have invested in transforming and stabilizing Afghanistan are
unlikely to completely abandon it. China will most likely remain cautious and
balance between its ambition to increase westward heading trade and ensure
that its relations with states in the Shanghai Cooperation Organization promote
regional stability.
INTRODUCTION: CHINA AND CHINESE INTEREST IN CENTRAL
ASIA
For the leaders in Beijing, relations with the Central Asian republics and
Afghanistan and developments in Central Asia at large are neither a top priority
concern nor a key geostrategic focus. The most essential economic prospects and
security concerns are concentrated in and emanate from the Western Pacific
theatre. During the Cold War era the Central Asian region, from the Chinese
perspective, was defined as a border region around which military and political
tensions with the Soviet Union were played out. Before that the region, including
Chinese Xinjiang, was an important transit area for trade going west via the Silk
Road, as well as an area where Chinese and Turkic peoples interacted and vied
for influence.
During the last twenty years Chinese focus on Central Asia has changed
significantly. Three key factors have been driving this change. First Beijing fears
that Islamist Salafist ideology combined with the rise of armed radical groups
fighting in Afghanistan could spread and throw the Xinjiang Uighur Autonomous
Region (XUAR) into a state of uprising or worse. Separatism has always been a
key concern for the central leadership in China who equate national cohesion
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