FEBRUARY 15, 2023
IntelBrief: China’s South Asia Troubles
Bottom Line Up Front
China’s efforts to build economic and political influence in South Asia are running into significant headwinds, including with its longtime ally, Pakistan.
Chinese relations with historic rival India remain tense over periodic border clashes and New Delhi’s participation in several U.S.-backed regional security groupings.
Pakistani citizens have demonstrated against the conditions imposed by China for investments in Pakistan under Beijing’s ambitious Belt and Road Initiative (BRI).
China’s economic policymakers see potential value in pursuing investments in Taliban-controlled Afghanistan, which has significant reserves of some critical minerals, but Islamic State groups pose a threat to Chinese investors there.
As China’s strategic influence around the globe grows, Beijing’s focus on South is exceeded only by its intense interest in East Asia. China shares a border with four South Asian states, including a narrow border along Afghanistan’s sparsely inhabited Wakhan Corridor. The corridor neighbors China’s Xinjiang province, where large numbers of Muslim Uyghurs are being detained by the government in what are reported to be camps imposing harsh penalties for expressions of faith or regional culture. Although China is wary of the return of Islamist hardliners amid the Taliban’s regaining power in Kabul, the Taliban poses no conventional military threat to China. Leaders in Beijing remain concerned however that the group is harboring ethnic Uyghur Islamist extremists of the Turkistan Islamic Party (TIP) as it did during its pre-9/11 rule. The TIP, which was listed under the UN’s al-Qaeda sanctions regime when it was formerly known as the East Turkistan Islamic Movement, seeks to use Afghanistan as a base from which to liberate Chinese Uyghurs. Strategically, Beijing is more concerned about the intentions and capabilities of India, whose population is set to exceed that of China this year, and with whom China’s troops have clashed on their border as recently as December 2022. China has long looked to Pakistan as an ally with which to apply pressure on India’s western border in the event of an all-out conflict.
https://thesoufancenter.org/intelbrief-2023-february-15/
