[A-List] China/US rivalry: Afghanistan

["Michael Keaney" <michael.keaney@xxxxxx>]

China's lofty ambitions in shattered Kabul
By Victoria Burnett
Financial Times; Oct 23, 2003

Sun Yuxi, China'sambass-ador to Afghanistan, is in the throes of an $8m
(?7m, £5m) project to refurbish his embassy. The tennis court is finished
and he has turned his attention to the sauna, basketball court and swimming
pool.

With an immaculate cream facade and bright red gates, the embassy gleams on
a street of shabby, bullet-pocked buildings and outshines many of Kabul's
rough-and-ready diplomatic missions.

"The embassy that we build should be a symbol of Chinese economic
development," says Mr Sun, who receives visitors in a huge office with plush
carpets.

His ambitious plans for the embassy are not mere architectural whimsy. China
is eager to foster strong relations with a neighbour that represents a
promising market but which under the Taliban regime harboured Islamic
militants from the western Chinese province of Xinjiang who, he says,
continue to be embroiled in a separatist struggle against Beijing.

About 1,000 militants from Xinjiang - most of them Muslim Uighurs - were
rounded up among al-Qaeda and Taliban captives during the US-led campaign to
oust the Taliban in 2001.

"The mainstay [of Islamic militants] is still hiding out in the border
between Afghanistan and Pakistan," says Mr Sun.

Suspected Taliban fighters and other militants are known to be sheltering
along the rugged border. Afghan and western security officials say they
include Chechen and Uzbek fighters but have not reported evidence of Uighur
separatists.

China is eager to counter growing US influence in a region where it had
carved itself a leading role in combating religious extremism and
separatism, analysts say. China initiated the creation of the Shanghai
Co-operation Organisation, a loose alliance with Russia, Kazakhstan,
Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan aimed at settling border issues,
promoting stability and quelling terrorism.

The organisation has staged its first military exercises in the past year, a
move read by analysts as an attempt to reassert its role in the region's
anti-terrorist war.

"China's preoccupation is about the presence of US forces in a part of the
world where it would like to stake out a sphere of influence," says Adam
Ward, senior fellow for east Asian security at the International Institute
for Strategic Studies. The US-led coalition has 11,500 troops in
Afghanistan.

A stable Afghanistan - through which the legendary Silk Route once linked
China to Europe - could once again be an Asian trading hub, analysts say,
and a key piece in China's vision for a prosperous central Asian bloc to its
west.

China offered $150m in aid to Afghanistan over five years (of a total $4.5bn
pledged to the country), $20m of which is funding the renovation of
hospitals in Kabul and in Kandahar and $30m for an irrigation system in
Parwan province, north of the capital.

Mr Sun says negotiations have started with Chinese investors for the
renovation of a textile factory built by the Chinese in the 1960s and silk
and herbal medicine farms in the south.

Ariana, the Afghan national airline, made an inaugural flight in July
between Kabul and Urumqi, capital of Xinjiang, with a view to starting
weekly flights.

China's exports to Afghanistan are low but Chinese products have made their
mark in the capital, where Chinese bicycles move in shoals through the
streets, generators chug outside houses and shops sell Chinese goods ranging
from motorcycles to toothpaste.

"China has a strong presence in the market here. Their prices are good and
their quality is good," says Syed Mustafa Kazimi, the Afghan commerce
minister.

A recent IMF report said Chinese exports to Afghanistan were $20m, or about
2.3 per cent of the total, in 2002, while central bank figures put them at
$160m, or about 10 per cent of the total. The Chinese embassy handles
300-600 visa applications each month from Afghan traders.

"When we came here we saw that they had nothing," says Tai San Lo of the
Afghanistan China Merchandise Trade Center, which invested $600,000 in a
Kabul warehouse to import electronics, generators and household goods.

A resurgence in activity by the ousted Taliban and concern that not enough
aid money is flowing into the shattered country have not shaken Mr Sun's
optimism.

"This is a long-term plan that shows our confidence in the reconstruction of
Afghanistan," he says. That plan includes a Chinese-built golf course - a
project even the upbeat ambassador recognises as ambitious. "Right now,
that's just a wild idea."