Chinese Enter Afghan Area HAMID KARZAI, the interim Afghan leader, visited Beijing yesterday to forge a new alliance with China that is likely to limit Western influence in Afghanistan. Mr Karzai met senior members of the Chinese leadership, including Zhu Rongji, the Prime Minister, who are believed to have offered their support if and when Afghan rulers want to rid themselves of foreign troops on their soil. In recent months China has become alarmed by the growing number of American and European soldiers stationed near its western border. Following the collapse of the Soviet Union, Beijing has regarded Central Asia as part of its sphere of influence. While supporting the US-led campaign to drive the Taleban from power, the Chinese leadership has also warned against a permanent presence of western troops in the region, fearing encirclement. A Chinese government spokesman said: “We have taken note that the US side has expressed on many occasions that it does not hope to have a long-term military presence in Central Asia.” The spokesman said that Chinese leaders would discuss the US presence in Afghanistan with Mr Karzai. Privately, Chinese diplomats last month expressed relief that the Northern Alliance had refused entry to larger contingents of British and other foreign troops, despite the help provided to anti-Taleban forces just weeks earlier. from The Times of London --
This is mostly posturing because China has supported Pakistan against India in the past. Bush is actually going to Bejing to meet with their leadership. Is it next week? Anyway, they are just flexing some muscle.
Umm... let's put it this way. If terrorists from Mexico blew up the Forbidden City tomorrow... and China discovered that President Fox supported them... would the US want a permanent Chinese presence on Mexican soil? It's just great power politics at work. China wants secure borders. That's a legitimate interest of any regional power.
China has been involved since day one. All those Chinese-supplied Al Qaeda weapons caches (many of which appear to be brand-new) we've been finding in Afghan would indicate that... They've also been making threatening moves on India's border, and have sent large numbers of new ballistic missiles to Pakistan in the past few weeks.
Gotta love small arms trafficking. Of course, the US is the world's largest exporter of small arms. *thinks they should all be banned*
haven: It's not so much the arms-trafficking that bothers me - everyone does that. It's the fact that they're still supplying Al Qaeda post-9/11 that bothers me. "Allies" my ass...
Of course we're not Allies. The two most powerful nations on earth have never been allies, AFAIK. Simple hegemon theory . Incidentally, do you think that Jiang Zemin would have approved such arm sales? Or do you think it was a rogue military leader (many of them in China). Jiang isn't an idiot, and supplying Al Queda with light arms seems on the sketchy end on risk/rewards analysis.
haven -- i'm not arguing with you, because I don't know yet what I'd say...but do you really feel like China is second only to the US in terms of world power?
