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Riiiight. With all those ports, infrastructure, and nice easy mountain terrain to navigate. And let’s say China does somehow befriend the Taliban and build all
by ericmay 5y ago
Riiiight. With all those ports, infrastructure, and nice easy mountain terrain to navigate.
And let’s say China does somehow befriend the Taliban and build all this infrastructure, and import hundreds of thousands of workers that somehow the Taliban doesn’t decide are yet another empire to kick out. What do you think they do with these resources? They make iPhones. That westerners buy.
And again, even if they do somehow make this happen. Why should anybody care? It’s not like the US is losing these resources or something. And why would China, as large of a country as it is, need these resources? Is it even profitable to extract?
I keep seeing this narrative and it seems to me to be hugely superficial at best. China and Russia would probably prefer the U.S. just keep wasting money and attention in Afghanistan.
- smegger001 5y agowhy bring in hundreds of thousands of workers when China can pay the Taliban to force the Afgans to do it and just send some engineers and managers
- greedo 5y agoThe modus operandi of China is employment for their people. In almost every country they've lent money for infrastructure, they've brought in their own construction people.
- issa 5y agoI think this is the fundamental fallacy in this whole situation. "Taliban" and "Afghans" are not two separate groups.
- smegger001 5y agoone is a radical armed violent subset of the other. in the same way that the klu kluk klan are american but America isn't the klan.
- issa 5y agoIt is a fraught comparison, but I would like to think that the Taliban has MUCH broader support in Afghanistan than the KKK does in the US.
- ericmay 5y agoWow jeez when you put it that simply of course they’ll just pay local warlords who totally won’t steal money for fake employees, and they’ll totally have these Afghan people who are hard working and really eager for that 9-5 lifestyle to get out of their own village to “mine” for Chinese engineers and managers. I hate to be flippant here but this really shows a continued western misunderstanding of how people in places like Afghanistan live. And even if they did all of that, what good is it exactly? Is China out of resources in China and now will build mountain passes and teach Afghanis how to drive trucks and all of that to mine resources? Sure sounds like nation building to me. And why would the Taliban agree to this anyway? They could just do the mining themselves.
- selimthegrim 5y agoThe copper lode at Mes Aynak monastery complex was probably worked by a bunch of serfs for the benefit of the monks. Plus ça change...
- A4ET8a8uTh0 5y agoEh, China is the new red scare. It is actually twice that since they still have communist in their official name. I jest, but only a little. I agree with you. It is not a straightforward and foregone conclusion. Taliban has clearly shown that it can play a very long game. That said, so can Chinese. US can barely handle one news cycle lately.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- mkhpalm 5y agoI think the plan so far is to use it as a land corridor between China Pakistan and/or Iran. https://foreignpolicy.com/2021/07/21/china-taliban-afghanistan-biden-troop-withdrawal-belt-road-geopolitics-strategy/ https://foreignpolicy.com/2021/07/21/china-taliban-afghanist...