Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi said, "China seeks to play an active role in Afghan reconstruction and reconciliation."
Boy, those headlines are reassuring, China finally gets it! ...Uh oh, hold on, I thought so, there are some slight wrinkles nearly unnoticeable there in those headlines. It seems it isn't to help the United States, but it's to help Afghanistan. Oh well, it's still a magnanimous gesture towards settling war to bring peace into the region since they share a strategic narrow border. What else could it be, right?--Wrong.
Mao Tse Tung & President NixonThe old saying, "You don't get anything for nothing." is certainly prescient here. It is with that foresight from past Chinese diplomatic encounters since President Richard Nixon discovered that ulterior Mandarin motives always prevail in any Manchurian negotiations. Haven't you ever heard of "saving face"?
Factoid: Afghanistan has asked China on several occasions to open their northern border in the Wakhan Corridor for economic reasons or as an alternative supply route for fighting the Taliban insurgency. Historically, Marco Polo traversed this rugged, deep, narrow valley pass sandwiched between Afghanistan and Chinese provinces considered even today as the only viable land passage in spite of its extremely rugged mountainous terrain. However, China has resisted, largely due to unrest in its far western province of Xinjiang, which borders the Wakhan Corridor that could supply ongoing anti-Beijing anarchists. In December 2009, it was reported that the United States had asked China to open the corridor with no end results. Is that some more of the unreported Obama foreign relations policies successes?
Afghanistan natural resources: coal, copper, iron ore, lithium, uranium, rare earth elements, chromite, gold, zinc, talc, barites, sulfur, lead, marble, precious and semi-precious stones, natural gas and petroleum. In 2010, U.S. and Afghan government officials estimated that untapped mineral deposits located in 2007 by the US Geological Survey are worth between $900 billion and $3 trillion.
The biggest find, however, is mining the 1.4 million tons of 'rare earth elements' such as lanthanum, cerium and neodymium in one place. There are 17 rare earth elements which are typically dispersed and not often found concentrated as rare earth minerals in economically exploitable amounts, so that is what is remarkable about Afghanistan.
Despite being one of the poorest nations in the world, Afghanistan may be sitting on one of the richest troves of rare earth minerals in the world, valued at nearly $1 trillion. It is in extremely high demand in manufacturing of high tech military hardware, computers and various electronics such as cell phones, television displays and communications which are exponentially growing.
So, China strategically is encouraging new investment of Chinese enterprises to mine these minerals in this land-locked country even with its arid, war-weary devastated countryside from years of Russian occupation with surrounding mountainous terrains. This is really why China is helping to build Afghan anti-terrorism capabilities by training local militia and police with arms and boots on the ground to protect their own national interests such as:
- In 2007, a Chinese government-owned company paid $3 billion to lease a 2,600-year-old Buddhist site for 30 years and plans to extract over $100 billion worth of copper from the area.
- In 2011, China became the first foreign country in decades to sign a oil exploration deal in Afghanistan when it inked a $7 billion pact.
- In 2013, China announced preliminary talks to construct a direct road link, Wakhan Corridor, to China across the remote 47-mile border between the two countries.
Obama losing shirt in cards with Hu of China.This is part of a trend that has been welcomed by the U.S. officials in the Obama administration. It is interesting that the Obama administration has not raised much fanfare about this U.S. capitulation to the Chinese government by the American people as Afghanistan is bought and paid for by our blood, sweat and treasure. No wonder the Chinese like to deal with the Obama administration.
In the meantime, the United States withdraws its troops as facilities, equipment and municipal infrastructures such as power plants, dams and roads are left behind for the Chinese to use in Afghanistan. After all, China needs them to corner the market on these strategic rare earth minerals to attain military superiority over the United States. Is this another Obama foreign policy blunder or a side deal cut with China to shore up and build up his feeble Obama Presidential diplomatic legacy?
