As the Taliban takes over control of Afghanistan, one nation is positively happy to be working with these Islamist extremists. China has been watching Afghanistan for a long time, waiting to make its move. And now the time has come.

The Biden administration claimed that the international community wouldn’t accept the Taliban. In August 6th remarks to the UN Security Council, Ambassador Jeffrey DeLaurentis warned:

“The Taliban must hear from the international community that we will not accept a military takeover of Afghanistan or a return of the Taliban’s Islamic Emirate. The Taliban will be isolated and an international pariah if they choose that path.”

In addition, Chargé d’Affaires to Afghanistan Ross Wilson tweeted this on Thursday:

The Taliban’s statements in Doha do not resemble their actions in Badakhshan, Ghazni, Helmand & Kandahar. Attempts to monopolize power through violence, fear, & war will only lead to international isolation.

— Chargé d’Affaires Ross Wilson (@USAmbKabul) August 12, 2021

President Xi Jinping must’ve snickered at that. After all, his nation was cozying up to the Taliban even before Afghanistan began collapsing.

You may wonder why a nation as advanced and powerful as China would have any interest in a country that operates under medieval tribalism. Yet here it is, ready to recognize the Taliban as the legitimate government of Afghanistan.

It certainly isn’t out of camaraderie. Instead, Afghanistan provides several ways for China to gain ultimate control in Asia.

To begin with, China is eager to continue with its own infrastructure, including the Belt-and-Road Initiative. Beijing, in fact, has been eyeing ways to make Kabul part of building the Peshawar-Kabul motorway, part of the BRI, which would connect Pakistan to Afghanistan.

At first Afghanistan resisted China’s lures, since the government didn’t want to anger Washington. But now, of course, everything has changed. Plus, in addition to the Peshawar-Kabul motorway, Beijing is also building a road through the Wakhan Corridor, mountainous territory between China’s western province of Xinjiang and to Afghanistan. And the Taliban could be useful with that project as well.

Wakhan Corridor. Steynard/flickr/CC BY-NC-SA 2.0.

Speaking of Xinjiang, you will recall that China is oppressing much of its Uyghur Muslim population there, including maintaining concentration camps. But an alliance with the Taliban just might smooth things over. In fact, two weeks ago Taliban spokesman Suhail Shaheen addressed the situation this way:

“We care about the oppression of Muslims, be it in Palestine, in Myanmar, or in China, and we care about the oppression of non-Muslims anywhere in the world. But what we are not going to do is interfere in China’s internal affairs.”

No doubt those words were music to Beijing’s ears.

Plus, Afghanistan is also home to vast, untapped reserves of rare-earth mineral deposits, such as lanthanum, cerium, and neodymium. It also has gold, platinum, silver, copper, iron, chromite, lithium, uranium, and aluminum. Then there are precious and semi-precious gems, too: high-quality emeralds, rubies, sapphires, turquoise, and lapis lazuli. All together, these untapped resources have been estimated at between $1-3 trillion.

And wouldn’t China love to get its hands on that?

Meanwhile, Xi Jinping is sitting back and laughing at Joe Biden’s feckless behavior in Afghanistan.

China is watching Biden handle Afghanistan, and laughing their ass off.

This is the clown that is going to stand up to Xi?

Please. pic.twitter.com/3hCyJ69J4e

— Pradheep J. Shanker (@Neoavatara) August 15, 2021

But while Biden let Afghanistan fall into Taliban hands without a so much as a whimper from his hideout at Camp David, another nation has concerns about China’s budding romance with the Taliban. And that would be our ally, India.

India and China do not get along. Plus, India and Pakistan have never gotten along. But India media sees the potential for a deadly threesome between China, Pakistan, and the Taliban. An English-language media source even calls it a “new Axis of Evil.”

Yet to avoid all this, all Joe Biden had to do was. . . nothing.

John Podhoretz writes in Commentary:

“All Joe Biden had to do was nothing. Had Joe Biden done nothing, Afghanistan would not have fallen to the Taliban today. Had he just let the status quo continue, the status quo would have continued. Afghanistan would have plodded along and we would have kept the Taliban from power with a small force of American military personnel among whose ranks there had not been a single fatality since March 2020—17 months without a death.. . . .”

“In so acting, Biden has cast the future of American foreign policy into the worst state of disrepair since the last helicopter-carries-people-to-the-airport-to-flee-the-country scene 46 years ago.”

We, along with our allies in Asia, may be paying for this administration’s blunder for a very long time, as China continues its ascent and America under Joe Biden flounders.

Featured image: Dominic Revard/flickr/cropped/CC BY-ND 2.0.