China needs a stable Afghanistan to tuck country under its Belt and Road

China has already been burned by failed investments in Afghanistan, most notably a copper project near Kabul.

China won’t be rushing into Afghanistan any time soon--not to fill the political and security void left by the U.S. and not to expand President Xi Jinping’s flagship Belt and Road project.

However decisive the Taliban’s victory looks right now, the country is far too fragile for Beijing to contemplate anything other than a pragmatic diplomatic engagement with a group it has spent decades trying to work with. It may dangle the promise of enhanced economic relations in front of an Islamist insurgent movement looking to cement key regional relationships, but the likelihood of any infrastructure projects materializing in the