After ten days of scanning the coverage of China’s potential role in Afghanistan, it’s clear that there is one voice missing from western media reports: the Afghans themselves. In no article did anyone consider the concerns of the Afghan people, what they might want or expect from a future where China will certainly play a prominent role. This only echoes the US led intervention, where, as always the local people only ever play a walk on part in a plot driven entirely by western interests.
Using only a Google news search for China and Afghanistan from 23rd August to 4th September, I surveyed English language news coverage by western media, ignoring outlets behind paywalls or requiring registration, to get an idea of how the subject was covered and allow anyone to verify my response. I ignored any other headlines that appeared on my social media feeds so as not to prejudice the input.
With the exit of western forces and the prominent role China has played in recent discussions with the Taliban, it is only right to consider what role they will play in Afghanistan’s future. All the articles justifiably considered the uncertainty of the situation and many were concerned with Chinese business interests, particularly with resource extraction such as minerals.
There was a general focus on how problematic Afghanistan would be for the Chinese and although that’s a reasonable concern and undoubtedly understood by the Communist Party of China (CPC), it is tainted by the invisibility of the Afghan people in the discussion. After over four decades of violence, much precipitated by the West, could there not be a glimmer of hope now that it’s Afghans themselves who are deciding how to run the country? It would seem not as far as western media is concerned.
In this spirit, Chinese interests are presented purely as economic and geo-political. The possibility that there would ever be a measure of altruism towards the beleaguered population never comes into it. Given that the Chinese government has already offered a substantial aid package and the West has blocked access to Afghan government funds abroad, you’d have to question who is genuinely motivated by humanitarian concerns. Much of the tone of the coverage is conveyed in the Time Magazine article: China Sees Opportunity After America’s Withdrawal From Afghanistan. But Can Beijing Do Any Better? Perhaps it would be best to ask, could they honestly do any worse than America’s decades of abject failure?
Naturally, Chinese media has made a lot of mileage out of the US exit but you could hardly blame them. Their attempt to use the situation to paint the US as an unreliable ally to Taiwan is quite reasonably criticised, as in this Atlantic article, which portrays Beijing as gloating over US failure. However this kind of negative commentary from Chinese officials and media is a relatively recent development and only a response to the rabid, anti-China propaganda coming out of the US since the Trump administration. This has only increased under Biden, the Senate having recently passed a bill allocating $300 million per year to anti Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) propaganda. The BBC echoes these sentiments, referring to Chinese propaganda, completely oblivious to its own massive culpability in its industrious production of anti-China propaganda. Both articles would like us to remain blissfully unaware that Chinese criticisms are broadly in keeping with a large portion of the US public, as polls have shown.
A number of articles refer to the issue of the Uighurs in the Chinese province of Xinjiang and their persecution is effectively taken as a matter of fact. The addition of a “China denies…” statement at the end of the allegations is only ever presented as little more than a formality. Every article deliberately plays down or even denies the existence of the Uighur separatist terrorist group, ETIM. Only the Guardian clearly acknowledges their existence in Afghanistan, while others like to use expressions like, “China claims…”, as if it’s not the well documented fact that it is. Newsweek, probably unintentionally, blew an inconvenient hole in this narrative recently by proudly declaring they had obtained an interview with them. The group’s history of terrorism is undeniable and was previously reported by the same media outlets that are now presenting it as questionable, as the BBC demonstrate in this article from 2014. ETIM’s presence in Afghanistan was sufficiently obvious and dangerous for the US air-force to decide to drop bombs on them. These same articles suggesting they don’t present a terrorist threat, completely avoid telling you that at least five thousand of their compatriots are fighting alongside ISIS and Al Qaeda linked groups in Syria.
As I demonstrated in my previous article, the media has failed to question any of the shoddy evidence presented for oppression of the Uighurs. Consider the claims made in the media and ponder for a minute. If at least 10% of the adult Uighur population are in concentration camps; if their women are subject to forced sterilization; if they live in fear of being disappeared; if they are forced into slave labour; if they are prevented from practicing their religion; if their entire culture is under threat – where are the refugees? Why are they not pouring out of the vast open borders of Xinjiang into neighbouring countries? Why, when Uighurs are widely employed in the police, military and prisons has there not been one whistle-blower, not one incriminating mobile phone video of their persecution? Why are other Muslim ethnic groups in China not being persecuted? Why are the mere handful of testimonies of this supposed violent persecution often from people who left China through normal immigration channels, under their own names with their official passports? Why, when all of this is going on, are population figures and every indicator of quality of life increasing?
Then ask yourself why, it seems, not one MSM journalist who has repeated these claims, has asked themselves these same elementary questions.
An “expert” in a CNBC article states,
At least optically, it seems kind of weird that, on the one hand, Beijing … would be willing to work with [the Taliban]. On the other hand, Islamist groups in Xinjiang are such a problem.
You have to wonder how this person became a senior fellow in China studies at the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR). If he knew anything about the subject, he would know that the majority of the world’s Muslim countries have supported China’s policies against Islamic extremism in Xinjiang. Even US allies like Saudi Arabia have supported China at U.N. votes on the issue, noting that the media usually forgets to tell you that western motions to condemn China have been completely outvoted, with twice the number of votes against them, in part due to the support from Muslim countries. The Taliban obviously understand this and have dealt with China accordingly. There is absolutely nothing incongruous about the constructive relationship because it’s about dealing with separatist terrorism not Islam itself.
Many articles attempt to convey the idea that China happily colludes with any morally repugnant regime like the Taliban, as another “expert” states to NPR,
The Chinese state is just as happy to work with a democracy as it is with an autocracy, and in this case, perhaps with a theocracy.
In other words it has been exactly like West, except that it has never overturned a democratically elected government to install a morally repugnant regime, as the US and UK have done on numerous occasions.
The Time article makes a similar insinuation with China’s relations with Pakistan, describing it as an, “all weather ally”. The UK and US have long supported Pakistan, shovelling in arms and billions of dollars and arms, even while it was blatantly backing the Taliban to kill American and British troops. If that’s not an all weather ally then I don’t know what is! The idea that we are somehow in a position to moralise over Chinese actions when they are no different or even less objectionable than our own is absurd, yet it remains a staple of western reporting on China.
China has yet to officially recognise the Taliban government and, as even a Guardian article states, it wants,
the international community to engage with Afghanistan’s new Taliban government and guide it actively.
Clearly, its wishes for the Afghan government are broadly in keeping with everyone else and not the laissez-faire approach to human rights abuses as is often implied.
After reading a dozen or so articles you could be forgiven for thinking that the writers would prefer it if China failed in Afghanistan. Both this Yahoo article and Time Magazine are almost explicit:
But Afghanistan isn’t called the “graveyard of empires” for nothing, and China’s “Peace through development” model has failed to completely quell Tibet and Xinjiang. Beijing also has a patchy record overseas, with states where it has gained tremendous influence—Myanmar, Venezuela, Sudan, among others—perpetually consumed by strife.
Here, in the first words we see a common theme in western media, projecting our own behaviour onto China. Because we came to rule over the country in the 19th century and occupy it more recently, continuing the previous century’s Great Game, then that is what China must be doing. Even a cursory glance at China’s Belt and Road Initiative shows that it has nothing to do with imperial designs and is about a mutual exchange, providing infrastructure for raw materials within regional development networks. No doubt China expects to leverage some soft power through the process but at least it doesn’t involve the dropping of bombs on farmers or dealing opium that we’ve favoured.
The second half of the first sentence is simply nonsense: development has brought peace to the regions, something we’ve endeavoured to disrupt by supporting separatist movements. There may well be some justifiable criticism of how they have dealt with separatist movements but no government quietly accepts such things, as the Spanish government has demonstrated in dealing with the Catalan vote for independence.
I hardly know where to start with the rancid hypocrisy of the last sentence. To blame the long term, complex problems in these countries, in which we have had significant influence ourselves, on China, is frankly preposterous. Particularly in the case of Venezuela where we have literally supported violent fascists to overthrow the democratically elected government.
We, the glorious West has divine right to interfere around the globe, exactly as we wish, yet China must be condemned for taking a hands off approach to investment in other countries. This sense of imperialistic entitlement, typified in this Time article, pollutes much of the media coverage of China and other countries we are told must be our enemies.
Yahoo News allows another projection of our own behaviour onto China with accusations of debt trap financing that we have used to enforce our neoliberal orthodoxy on developing nations. Even mainstream publications like the Atlantic have debunked these claims, so to uncritically repeat them is inexcusable. CNBC then goes onto suggest that:
It should be an international initiative to make sure that if any country is agreeing to exploit its minerals on behalf of the Taliban, to only do it under strict humanitarian conditions where human rights, and rights for women are preserved in the situation.
I’d agree entirely if it meant we held multinational corporations to account in the same way. We’ve allowed our businesses to trample over human rights all over the world, often supporting the violent suppression of indigenous protests and denying them any legal redress. Forbes magazine describes Chinese business involvement in Afghanistan as provocative! And occupying a country, fighting a pointless war for twenty years that killed 70,000 civilians and bankrolling a corrupt government is not provocative? Yet again the rest of the world has to be held to a different set of standards than our own.
I could go on in this manner, pointing out the complete disconnect between our demands on China and our own behaviour, whilst completely ignoring the voices of Afghan people but let’s end on one tiny issue that reflects the level of understanding of the country. Most articles correctly point out that the two countries share a border but you’d have to wonder if any of the journalists had bothered looking at a map, let alone gone to the region, as I have. Its a fucking mountain range, with peaks up to 6000m high! To all intents and purposes it’s completely impassable but only one article attempts to describe it in any way by using the term “rocky”. Something of an understatement! Any route between the two countries is circuitous through Tajikistan or Pakistan and often ill suited to large transport. Hence any development would be part of a regional process. All the more reason to discuss say, Afghanistan joining the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation, the China and Russia led body that provides a forum for such things, but ignored by the coverage. Indeed, Russia’s far more developed political and security interests in the country, which China could benefit from, is never discussed.
So, not only do we see a western agenda, driven by the US, governing much of the coverage, we see a limited understanding of some of the basic issues that affect the subject. Whilst we wouldn’t expect all of the articles to mention these things, the fact that none of them do raises questions about the level of understanding among some journalists, who we assume would be better informed.
