Ji Rong, a counsellor in China's Ministry of Foreign Affairs, said China has been providing food to families in Afghanistan.
These actions are similar to actions China has utilized in developing countries across the world, providing infrastructure or other necessities in exchange for access to the country's natural resources.
"A total of 1,100 needy #Afghan families received #China-donated #food aid in the capital city of #Kabul on Wednesday, & each family received 50 kg of wheat. said Mufti Habibullah, a senior official from the Afghan Ministry of Refugees and Repatriation Affairs," Ji Rong wrote in an Aug. 18 Twitter post.
Chinese officials have been critical of U.S. involvement in Afghanistan, with one Ministry of Foreign Affairs spokesperson saying on Twitter, "The 20-year-long 'transformation' forced by US on Afghanistan has not only failed to lift the Afghans out of poverty & instability, but also exacerbated the dual crises of survival & national development. It is yet another example of the scourge of 'US democracy.'”
Bloomberg reported in August 2021 that China was eyeing Afghanistan's natural resources after the U.S. withdrew its troops. Afghanistan has an estimated $1 trillion worth of deposits of rare earth minerals needed to produce semiconductor chips, high-capacity batteries and other critical technology.
“With the U.S. withdrawal, Beijing can offer what Kabul needs most: political impartiality and economic investment,” Zhou Bo, a former colonel in the People’s Liberation Army, wrote in an op-ed in the New York Times, according to Bloomberg. “Afghanistan in turn has what China most prizes: opportunities in infrastructure and industry building — areas in which China’s capabilities are arguably unmatched — and access to $1 trillion in untapped mineral deposits.”
Dr. Jon B. Alterman, director of the Center for Strategic and International Studies' Middle East Program, said in an episode of the Pekingology podcast, "Increasingly in recent years, because of a sense that the U.S. was not as committed to the Middle East as it had been in previous years. There is a sense that that on the Middle Eastern side, they need to develop a deeper relationship with China, and they're interested in seeing what that might look like...[Countries like Egypt are] interested in exploring a relationship with China, partly because they think they can get things from China. If you look at where energy demand growth is coming from, it's coming from China. [China will] leave the United States to making good friends and and hostile enemies and everything else. And they'll just try to do business with whoever they can do business with."
Over the last two decades, China surpassed the U.S. as South America's top trading partner, according to the Council on Foreign Relations. Chinese state-owned enterprises have invested in infrastructure and other development in countries including Brazil and Venezuela, while increasing China's diplomatic, cultural and military presence there. So far, 20 Latin American countries have agreed to participate in China's Belt and Road Initiative.
China has become Africa's biggest trade partner over the course of the last decade, sourcing key natural resources from various countries across the continent, according to a June 2022 report from CSIS. SMB-Winning Consortium is comprised of private Chinese corporations and state-owned enterprises and has been operating in Guinea since 2014 as one of Guinea's top mineral exporters. Through SMB-Winning, China has secured access to bauxite, which is critical in aluminum production, as well as iron ore, which is used in making steel.
Guinea is the world's top bauxite producer, and China is the world's top aluminum producer, according to the CSIS report. China was able to secure its position in Guinea in part by promising to expand infrastructure in the region. In 2017, the Industrial and Commercial Bank of China signed a 20-year agreement with Guinea's government, loaning them $20 billion (almost double Guinea's GDP that year) for infrastructure development, to be repaid in the form of mining revenue.
Congressman Mike Waltz, R-Fla, an Army veteran and former Green Beret, said in a recent episode of the Ruthless podcast that he had helped to commission the U.S. Geological Survey of Afghanistan in 2005, which found Afghanistan had "massive, massive deposits" of minerals including chromite, lithium and copper.
"Guess who's sitting in Bagram Air Base now? A Chinese geological survey team that's going to go in and scoop all of that stuff up," Waltz said in the Ruthless podcast. "On so many levels, it's just a strategic fiasco."
