China’s Neighborhood Keeps Getting Rougher

One of the main obstacles to China’s rise has always been geography. The country has a whopping 14 neighbors, tied with Russia for the most shared borders in the world. Each neighbor is a potential vulnerability, depending on the state of bilateral relations. Perhaps more worrying to Beijing, however, the stability and security of its border regions also depends on a factor China has no control over: the domestic conditions in other countries.

As of September 2021, two of China’s neighbors – Afghanistan and Myanmar – are in dire straits, with civil war and state collapse looming as very real possibilities.

China and Afghanistan

The lightning speed of the Taliban’s advances in Afghanistan took the world by surprise. Even those who believed the Afghan government would inevitably fall after the U.S. withdrawal were shocked by the speed with which it happened. While China tried to make the best of the situation, attempting to capitalize on the damage done to the U.S. reputation, there is no way to spin this as a net positive for Beijing. A fundamentalist Islamic theocracy on China’s borders is worrying enough; the same regime lacking full control of the country, allowing other terrorist groups to thrive, is a nightmare.

As Yun Sun wrote recently in War on the Rocks, China is uncomfortable with the Taliban: “The Taliban’s fundamentalist nature, their association with and harboring of al-Qaida, and their questionable relationship with Uyghur militants all led Chinese officials to view them negatively.” Beijing never recognized the Taliban regime in its previous incarnation.

Today, China’s willingness to engage has changed, in part because the Taliban are sounding all the right notes about inclusivity, respect for women and minority rights, and, of course, upholding Beijing’s interests by not providing safe harbor for foreign (read: Uyghur) militants. But, as Sun noted, there are plenty of reasons to doubt how serious the Taliban are about those promises and thus there are major questions about the future of Beijing’s engagement with Afghanistan.

Even if we take at face value the Taliban’s assurances that they will not allow threats to China to take hold on Afghan soil, there is a hard limit to the Taliban’s ability to make good on those promises. The Taliban are not a unified entity, and harder-line elements may be resistant to making nice with the avowedly atheist Chinese regime. And there is a real risk that the collapse of the Afghan National Army will reverse the progress made in rooting out the Islamic State’s Afghan affiliate, which could also pose a threat to China.

China has few direct interests at stake in Afghanistan, precisely because of the country’s instability. Chinese companies have been reluctant to make large investments, and those that have been made – most notably, the $2.8 billion deal for the Mes Aynak copper mine, which was never developed – served as cautionary tales. More concerning for Beijing is the potential for instability in Afghanistan to threaten Chinese interests in nearby neighboring states. In a worst-case scenario, terrorists groomed and harbored in Afghanistan could undertake attacks on Chinese soil.

While China may not have many interests at stake in Afghanistan, there are a wealth of potential targets for Islamic State and other terrorist groups just across the border in Pakistan. The China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC), which encompasses projects worth at least $62 billion so far, is the “crown jewel” of China’s Belt and Road Initiative.

Even before the Taliban captured Kabul, Pakistan had seen a worrying increase in attacks on Chinese nationals and projects as the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan progressed. In April, a hotel in Quetta was bombed in an unsuccessful attempt to assassinate the Chinese ambassador. An attack on a bus carrying Chinese engineers in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province in July killed nine Chinese nationals and three Pakistanis; in August a gunman opened fire on a car transporting Chinese nationals in Karachi.

Worryingly, these attacks were claimed by the Pakistani Taliban (TTP), rather than the Baloch national groups that have previously carried out sporadic attacks on Chinese interests in Pakistan. Islamabad has long complained that the TTP enjoy safe haven in Afghanistan. Despite the Taliban’s promises not to support foreign fighters, so far their Pakistani brethren have only gained strength alongside Taliban advances in Afghanistan.

As Akbar Notezai wrote in a previous analysis for The Diplomat:

“Although the Afghan Taliban have reportedly said they will not harbor militants that seek to strike other countries, groups opposed to both Pakistan and China, especially following its heavy investments in CPEC, have long found refuge in Afghanistan. Whether due to fear of reprisal or kinship ties, the Afghan Taliban have not been willing to take action against the groups that threaten Chinese interests in Pakistan. The TTP and other militants will continue to pose a threat to Chinese interests on Pakistani soil – and as instability in Afghanistan increases, so will the danger for CPEC.”

China and Myanmar

While the situation in Afghanistan has captivated global attention, chaos continues on China’s southwestern border, in Myanmar, as well. Seven months after Myanmar’s military deposed the civilian government, Myanmar’s people are still fighting the return to junta rule. Much of the country’s service infrastructure, from hospitals to banks, remains shuttered due to the resolve of those taking part in the Civil Disobedience Movement.

Meanwhile, the junta continues to arrest and at times kills those who oppose it, from politicians to anonymous protesters. According to Radio Free Asia, the “military regime has arrested a total of 324 NLD members – 98 of whom are members of parliament (MPs) – since its Feb. 1 coup d’état.” According to the Assistance Association for Political Prisoners, over 1,000 people have been killed by the junta and another 5,800 have been arrested.

Violence begets violence, as the saying goes, and in Myanmar that has rung true. Previously peaceful protesters began picking up arms and laying explosives in a desperate effort to achieve by force what marching in the streets had not: The overthrow of the new military regime. At the same time, armed ethnic organizations ramped up their own wars against the Tatmadaw, intensifying separate conflicts that have waged for decades over autonomy and access to natural resources in ethnic areas. Some of these ethnic armed groups, including the Kachin Independence Army and Karen National Union, are training the junta’s opponents in larger cities, the newly dubbed People’s Defense Force.

These efforts are unlikely to successfully unseat the Tatmadaw, but they have the potential to pull the country into civil war – or, more accurately, to bring to a boil the long-simmering internal conflicts that have plagued the country since its founding. The Tatmadaw may be Myanmar’s de facto rulers, but the extent to which they can truly claim to control the country is in doubt.

In Myanmar, as in Afghanistan, there are both direct and indirect consequences for China. Myanmar is host to a major leg of China’s Belt and Road Initiative, the China-Myanmar Economic Corridor, which includes gas and oil pipelines connecting China’s Yunnan province to the Indian Ocean; the Muse-Mandalay Railway; and a deep-sea port and special economic zone in Kyaukphyu, Myanmar. Those investments are now at risk from both instability and the reputational costs of being closely associated with a regime that lacks legitimacy at home and abroad.

There are more immediate concerns as well: The increased threat to Chinese citizens and property. Previous spurts of violence in Myanmar have sent refugees pouring over the border into China. In both 2015 and 2017, Chinese nationals were injured and killed when shelling by the Tatmadaw, targeting ethnic armed groups, landed on China’s side of the border. The prospect of spillover is doubly daunting as COVID-19 surges nearly unchecked in Myanmar. Already, China has been forced to lock down areas along the border as outbreaks keep cropping up.

Beijing has not shied away from engaging with the Tatmadaw, just as it extended a hand to the Taliban. But we should not mistake pragmatism for preference in either case. The coup in Myanmar, and the resulting instability, is decidedly not in China’s interests.

With Neighbors Like These...

Perhaps the biggest irony is this: For all China’s flaws and aggression in other areas, Beijing had little to do with the crises in either Afghanistan or Myanmar. In Myanmar, the coup and ensuing chaos were entirely homegrown; in Afghanistan, the humanitarian crisis now unfolding is the result of a toxic brew of U.S. neo-imperialism mixed with Afghan corruption and ethnonationalism. Yet both these problems are now posing threats to China.

China frequently likes to trot out proverbs highlighting the importance of friendly relations with neighbors. “A close neighbor is better than a distant relative,” one such saying goes. But faced with two failing states on its borders, Chinese officials may be privately thinking more along the lines of an American idiom: With neighbors like these, who needs enemies?