Chinese State Media Welcomes Taliban’s Rise in Afghanistan, Exults US ‘Defeat’

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The Taliban takeover of Afghanistan gave the Chinese regime a golden opportunity to attack the United States and deepen its own influence. And it wasted no time to seize it.

State-run newspapers, broadcasters, and Chinese diplomats have launched a propaganda offensive not dissimilar to the regime’s ongoing efforts to deflect blame around the origins of the pandemic.

The propaganda includes touting the prospective Chinese friendship with the Taliban insurgents, who have taken over Afghanistan at a sweeping pace in the past week, mocking the U.S. “defeat,” and threatening Taiwan by questioning U.S. commitment in the Asian region.

Put together, the narrative put forward by the communist regime was: the United States has failed Afghanistan, and Beijing is ready to offer an olive branch.

“Wherever the US sets foot in, be it Iraq, Syria, or Afghanistan, we see turbulence, division, broken families, deaths, and other scars in the mess it has left. The U.S. power and role is destructive rather than constructive,” said Chinese foreign ministry spokesperson Hua Chunying in an Aug. 17 press briefing. She told reporters a day prior that the changes in Afghanistan were a result of “the will and choice of the Afghan people.”

In late July, about a month before the scheduled U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan, the Chinese regime was among the first countries to signal its support for the Islamist militants when Foreign Minister Wang Yi hosted a delegation of Taliban representatives in the port city of Tianjin.

‘The Enemy’s Enemy Is a Friend’

Images and videos showed thousands of Afghan civilians thronging Kabul airport in a desperate bid to escape the war-torn country, fearful of a revival of the past harsh practices—including public stoning, whipping, and hanging—under Islamic militants’ rule two decades ago. In the Taliban-captured cities, many residents have chosen to lie low and stay indoors, while shops, supermarkets, and government offices remain shuttered.

A man pulls a girl to get inside Hamid Karzai International Airport in Kabul, Afghanistan on Aug. 16, 2021. (Stringer/Reuters)

China and Russia are among a handful of countries that have chosen to keep their embassies open, as the United States evacuated diplomats by helicopter. Meanwhile, Chinese state media were painting a welcoming picture of the Taliban’s victory, with one article dated Aug. 17 headlined “normalcy returns to Afghan capital.”

State-run news agency Xinhua, in an Aug. 16 article, found similarity in the Talibans’ military strategy and how the Chinese Communist Party won the Chinese Civil War against the Kuomintang during the 1940s, calling the Taliban takeover a case of “the weak overcoming the strong” through rural guerrilla warfare.

It claimed that the “public sentiments in Afghanistan were very different from Western portrayals” and that Afghan cities were surrendering to the Taliban because the militants had popular support.

Hu Xijin, editor of the hawkish state-run tabloid Global Times, suggested on Twitter that “the power transition in Afghanistan is even more smooth than presidential transition in the US,” adding, in a separate tweet, that the regime’s “principle of non-interference” has enabled it to “maintain the confidence that it need not close its embassy.”

“No matter who is in power, we’re ready to be Afghanistan’s friend,” he wrote on Aug. 15.

Feng Chongyi, a professor on China studies at the University of Technology Sydney, said the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) support for the Taliban was strategic.

The regime “supports Taliban because they and the United States are on the opposite sides,” Feng told The Epoch Times. “The CCP’s idea is that the enemy’s enemy is a friend.”

Hundreds of people run alongside a U.S. Air Force C-17 transport plane, some climbing on the plane, as it moves down a runway of the international airport, in Kabul, Afghanistan, on Aug.16. 2021. (Verified UGC via AP)

While ideologically, the atheist CCP is not compatible with the Taliban, they could support the group and through it “create trouble for America,” according to China affairs commentator Tang Jingyuan.

“By diverting U.S. attention, it would ease the CCP’s pressure in a direct confrontation,” he told The Epoch Times.

Pressuring Taiwan

Besides mocking the United States with descriptors such as “humiliating,” “deleterious,” and “a death knell to the falling U.S. hegemony,” Chinese propaganda also capitalized on the U.S. troop withdrawal to undermine the United States’ reliability on the world stage.

Taking aim at Taiwan, a Global Times editorial on Monday claimed that the “Afghan abandonment” served a lesson for the democratically ruled island, which has relied on U.S. support as it navigates the aggravating pressure from Beijing to reclaim the country as its own.

While Taiwan’s ruling administration has not weighed in on the Afghan situation, they “ must have known better in secret that the US is not reliable,” read the Global Times article.

A Taliban fighter mans a machinegun on top of a vehicle as they patrol along a street in Kabul on Aug. 16, 2021. (Wakil Kohsar/AFP via Getty Images)

The Chinese regime carried out assault drills near Taiwan on Tuesday, showing off warships and anti-submarine aircraft near the southwest and southeast of the island in response to what Beijing characterized as “provocations by Taiwan.”

By sowing division between the United States and its Asian allies, the Chinese regime is trying to weaken the U.S.-centered world order and promote one of its own, said Tang.

“There’s no comparison between Taiwan and Afghanistan,” he said, adding that from a geopolitical standpoint, Washington could not afford to give up Taiwan.

Yu Tsung-chi, a former associate dean of the Political Warfare Cadres Academy at Taipei-based National Defense University, echoed Tang’s views.

The United States has been making efforts to strengthen ties with Taiwan, “not because Taiwan relies on America, rather, more because America needs Taiwan,” he told The Epoch Times.

A Chinese invasion of Taiwan would have a direct affect on Japan, South Korea, and even Australia, he said, adding that the need to prevent Taiwan’s advanced microchip manufacturing industry from being controlled by Beijing would compel the United States to step in if the regime makes military move on the island.

Luo Ya contributed to this report.