1. Can the Belt and Road Initiative Succeed in Afghanistan?
- Author:
- Sudha Ramachandran
- Publication Date:
- 05-2023
- Content Type:
- Journal Article
- Journal:
- China Brief
- Institution:
- The Jamestown Foundation
- Abstract:
- At a trilateral meeting in Islamabad on May 9, the foreign ministers of China, Pakistan and Afghanistan agreed to extend the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) into Afghanistan and reaffirmed their support for multilateral infrastructure projects already underway, including the Central Asia-South Asia (CASA) power project and the Trans-Afghan Railways (People’s Republic of China Ministry of Foreign Affairs [FMPRC], May 9). Earlier on January 5, the Taliban regime signed an agreement with the Xinjiang Central Asia Petroleum and Gas Company (CAPEIC), a subsidiary of the state-owned China National Petroleum Company (CNPC), for the extraction of oil from the Amu Darya basin, under which China will invest $150 million annually for three years and increase it thereafter to $540 million for the contract’s 25-year duration (Kabul Now, January 5). Then on April 13, Afghanistan’s Ministry of Mines and Petroleum announced that the Chinese company Gochin had expressed interest in investing $10 billion in Afghanistan’s lithium reserves (Kabul Now, April 13). Meanwhile, China is reported to be in talks with the Taliban regime over renegotiating the terms of a 2008 contract to mine copper from the Mes Aynak reserves in Logar province (The Print, June 8, 2022). The agreements, including plans to extend CPEC—a key leg of China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI)—into Afghanistan, are a significant development. The deal relating to oil extraction in the Amu Darya basin is the Taliban regime’s first major foreign investment deal. However, in the past, major Chinese projects have failed to take off. Will the recent deals remain in limbo as well? China’s growing role in Afghanistan faces formidable challenges.
- Topic:
- Foreign Policy, Development, Infrastructure, and Belt and Road Initiative (BRI)
- Political Geography:
- Afghanistan, China, and South Asia