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China to US: Hasty withdrawal from Afghanistan made serious negative impact
In a telephone conversation, Chinese state councillor Wang Yi told US secretary of state Antony Blinken that the US should play a constructive role in helping Afghanistan stabilise, prevent chaos, and rebuild peace following the takeover by the Taliban
The hasty withdrawal of American troops from Afghanistan has had a “serious negative impact”, the Chinese state councillor and foreign minister Wang Yi has told US secretary of state Antony Blinken, adding that the developments have shown that “mechanically” applied foreign models don’t work in another country.
In a telephone conversation early on Tuesday, Wang told Blinken that the US should play a constructive role in helping Afghanistan stabilise, prevent chaos, and rebuild peace following the takeover by the Taliban group.
“The US hastily withdrawing its troops… has already had a serious negative impact on the situation in Afghanistan,” Wang said, adding the next steps should not create further problems.
Wang told Blinken the facts on the ground in Afghanistan proved that a foreign model could not be arbitrarily or mechanically applied to a country with different cultural and historical conditions, the news agency Xinhua said in a report on the phone conversation.
“A regime cannot stand without the support of the people. Solving problems with power and military means will only increase problems. The lessons in this regard deserve serious reflection,” Wang said.
Wang spoke to Blinken hours after the Taliban swept unopposed into capital Kabul and took control of the presidential palace as President Ashraf Ghani fled the capital.
Following the rapid takeover by the Taliban, thousands of civilians desperate to flee Afghanistan thronged Kabul airport’s single runway on Monday.
US President Joe Biden blamed the Taliban’s takeover of Afghanistan on Afghan political leaders who fled the country and the unwillingness of the Afghan army to fight the militant group.
Wang said that both China and the US are permanent members of the United Nations Security Council and important participants in the international system.
“In the face of various global challenges and urgent regional hotspot issues, the two countries should carry out coordination and cooperation, which is what the international community is looking forward to,” Wang was quoted as saying.
“But the US cannot on one hand actively seek to contain and suppress China and harm China’s legitimate rights and interests, and on the other hand hope for China’s cooperation,” Wang said.
Wang criticised Washington for removing the East Turkestan Islamic Movement (ETIM) from its list of terrorist groups, saying it showed US double standards on counterterrorism.
Beijing says the ETIM is active in Afghanistan and wants to create a separate state in China’s western region of Xinjiang, where Chinese authorities have set up mass detention camps they say are aimed at vocational training to curb extremism among Muslim minorities especially, the Uighur community.
For his part, Blinken said that it is important for the US and China to maintain communication on major international and regional issues.
Blinken was quoted as saying by Xinhua that he agrees that it is a common goal for the US and China to realise peaceful coexistence, voicing hope that both sides will seek and carry out cooperation.
There are also obvious differences between the two sides, Blinken said, adding that those can be gradually resolved in a constructive way.
The US state department, according to a Reuters report from Washington, said in a short statement that Blinken spoke with Wang about “the security situation and our respective efforts to bring the US and PRC citizens to safety,” using the acronym for the People’s Republic of China.
The state department statement said Blinken had spoken separately to Russian foreign minister Sergei Lavrov.
