China’s hopes of asserting its primacy over Afghanistan and Pakistan and creating an economically prosperous and stable region to its west and southwest appear less likely than ever considering recent events. In October tensions between Pakistan and the Afghan Taliban culminated with a deadly exchange of missile strikes along their shared border. The pair’s once-strong alliance has been on a downward trajectory since the Taliban returned to power in Kabul in September 2021, with Islamabad accusing its neighbours of not doing enough to prevent cross-border terrorism.
Nonetheless, the sudden escalation into conflict in October triggered global anxiety. Saudi Arabia, a recent signatory to a mutual-defence pact with Pakistan, welcomed Qatari and Turkish mediation, keen to prevent the agreement from being tested so soon. No other country would have been more concerned, however, than China. Having made a $62 billion bet on Islamabad a decade ago, Beijing is desperate for stability in the region. However, facing rising domestic militancy and an increasingly hostile neighbourhood, Pakistan’s troubles only seem to be growing, much to China’s dismay.
CPEC Caught in the Crossfire
In recent years, China has intensified efforts to gain leverage in Pakistan through greater economic investment under the purview of the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC). The central purpose of CPEC, so far as Beijing is concerned, is to provide China with access to the Arabian sea through a network of infrastructure projects, culminating in Gwadar Port in the province of Balochistan. However, CPEC has increasingly functioned as a mechanism through which Beijing applies pressure on Islamabad – from demanding greater security measures to protect Chinese personnel working on projects in the country, to extending loans on terms that have exacerbated Pakistan mounting debt burden.
This financial leverage has only grown amid Pakistan’s worsening economic crisis, leaving the country more dependent on Chinese financing than ever before. Further afield, China has sought to link CPEC to wider regional Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) schemes, including mining ventures and infrastructure plans in neighbouring Afghanistan. To this end, the Taliban’s return to power in Kabul was met with optimism in Beijing, offering the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) this much coveted opportunity to extend CPEC into Afghanistan for both increased connectivity and eventual resource extraction.
The hope of Islamabad building a robust relationship with Kabul and facilitating investment in the region did not appear misplaced at the time. In the days and weeks that followed the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan, then-Pakistani Prime Minister Imran Khan was quick to declare that the Taliban had broken the “shackles of slavery”, whilst Faiz Hameed, then-head of the country’s foremost intelligence service, Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI), was pictured in Kabul helping to ensure a smooth transition to power for the group. No one foresaw how dramatically this long-standing relationship would deteriorate.
The absence of American troops in Afghanistan, coupled with the Biden administration’s pivot to the Indo-Pacific, created space for China to gain a foothold in the region. Despite this, the CCP has so far failed to capitalise on this opening, as efforts to extend CPEC into Afghanistan have repeatedly stalled. Most recently, during a trilateral meeting in August between Afghanistan, Pakistan and China, CPEC was even invoked as a means of easing tensions and mediating the strained relationship between Kabul and Islamabad. With the heavily sanctioned Taliban government in power, China had hoped that the prospect of greater investment would persuade Afghanistan to set aside its differences with its neighbours. However, any optimism was quickly dissipated amid the clashes that occurred between the Taliban and the Pakistani army just two months later.
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While the Trump Administration has made some efforts to rekindle the U.S.-Pakistan relationship, China remains Pakistan’s principal external partner. Even before the economic and political crisis that followed former Prime Minister Imran Khan’s ouster in 2022, Islamabad was the third largest recipient of financial aid from Beijing. Since then, the CCP has continued to invest in the country, despite seeing little tangible return. The main cause of China’s limited success in yielding benefits from its investments is domestic unrest, which has disrupted CPEC projects and stalled progress on multiple fronts. In Balochistan, frequent attacks by the Balochistan Liberation Army (BLA) have hindered meaningful development on key CPEC initiatives, in the province, including its flagship project, Gwadar Port. The security situation has become so severe that the inauguration of a CPEC-funded airport in Gwadar in the latter half of 2024 had to be held online, owing to the significant risk facing senior officials had they attended in person.
Aside from the BLA, Pakistan has faced a grave security threat from the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), the country’s own Taliban offshoot. Much like the BLA’s operations in Balochistan, the TTP have posed a major challenge to Pakistani security forces and Chinese infrastructure projects in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa. The difference between these attacks and those of the BLA, however, is the cross-border nature of TTP operations. Operating in Pakistan’s tribal areas, the TTP have benefitted from the porous border between Afghanistan and Pakistan, fleeing across the boundary after conducting attacks and even collaborating with terrorist groups inside of Afghanistan. The expectation that the Taliban’s return in Kabul would change Islamabad’s fortunes was quickly proved wrong and has led to the issues that unfolded last October.
In Afghan-Pakistan Clashes, China Stands to Lose
Over four years on from the events of August 2021, the Taliban’s return has proven deeply destabilising for both Pakistan and China. TTP militancy along the border with Afghanistan has not abated and, in fact, it has intensified. Pakistani generals have admitted that the Taliban simply does not listen when asked to support counter-terrorism operations – a far cry from the client-like relationship the Pakistani military enjoyed during the U.S.-led war on terror. Complicating matters further, Pakistan continues to pressure Afghanistan over its ties to the TTP, even as its own military maintains links to groups such as Jaish-e-Mohammed and Lashkar-e-Taiba. It is not only Pakistani appeals that have gone unheeded. Beijing has also struggled to convince the Taliban to address Islamabad’s security concerns, raising doubts over whether Afghanistan’s inclusion in CPEC will ever be plausible.
Yet, both Pakistan and China know the Afghan Taliban are not solely responsible for the TTP’s resurgence. The group has long drawn strength from the militant infrastructure that Islamabad itself developed during the Soviet-Afghan war and later repurposed and redirected towards the Kashmir insurgency. Now that these militants have turned their guns on the Pakistani state, the military reprisals they face only serve to fuel further recruitment and violence. In September, the Pakistani military was accused of launching air raids that killed civilians in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa. This sort of heavy-handed response to militancy risks further radicalising local communities, pushing more Pakistanis to take up arms against the state and undoubtedly frustrating a Chinese government that is desperate for stability.
In light of October’s border skirmishes, Beijing has once more stepped in to urge restraint, backing international efforts to broker a ceasefire. While the prospect of the conflict escalating into a wider regional crisis is troubling, Beijing’s main concern remains financial. Against this backdrop, the shockwaves from November’s blast in Islamabad will have been felt acutely in Beijing. The attack, the first of its kind in the capital for three years, underscored that the TTP is gaining strength, not weakening. If Chinese officials can no longer travel safely to Islamabad, China may be forced to reconsider the extent of its engagement in Pakistan altogether. For the time being, every crisis that Islamabad has to face represents a threat to the progress of CPEC and undermines China’s conspicuous investment. No matter how relations between Pakistan and Afghanistan evolve in the aftermath of their military exchange and persistent TTP attacks, one reality persists: so long as Pakistan remains unstable, China stands to lose the most.
