(PresidentialInsider.com)- China wasted no time stepping into the void created when the Biden Administration quickly withdrew from Afghanistan and ceded the country to the Taliban. Tragically, anyone with half a brain knew this was coming.
Even before the US withdrawal, China was meeting with members of the Taliban while working with the Russians to prevent the US from establishing a counter-intelligence base in one of Afghanistan’s neighboring countries.
But the Biden Administration moved full steam ahead with the withdrawal. Was the White House indifferent to China’s plans? Or was this administration just too incompetent to notice them?
Whatever the case is, the White House created a vacuum which the Communist Chinese Regime quickly filled.
Last week China announced that it would be providing nearly $31 million in food, supplies and medicine to the Taliban-controlled government of Afghanistan.
In announcing the move, Hua Chunyin, spokesman for China’s Foreign Ministry said this humanitarian aid would be for “emergency use to the Afghan people.”
In addition to this aid, Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi also said that China would donate three million doses of its COVID vaccine to Afghanistan.
Just days after the US completed is bungled withdrawal, Taliban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid said that China was “ready to invest in and reconstruct Afghanistan,” adding that China was Afghanistan’s gateway to the global markets.
Now, China isn’t doing all of this simply for altruistic reasons. It stands to gain quite a bit in wooing the Taliban.
This partnership with the Taliban will open the door for China to profit from Afghanistan’s vast stores of rare earth metals.
According to CNBC, Afghanistan is estimated to have $3 trillion worth of rare earth metals including lanthanum, cerium, neodymium, aluminum, gold, silver, zinc, mercury, and the all-important lithium. These metals are used in everything from electronics and electric vehicles to satellites and aircraft.
As it is China already dominates the rare earth metals market globally. About 35 percent of rare earths global reserves are in China. Additionally, the country’s mining industry is so enormous, it produced 70 percent of the total rare earths mined in 2018 – 120,000 metric tons.
This is why in mid-August only hours after the Taliban took Kabul and ousted the US-backed civilian government, Hua Chunying, a spokeswoman for Beijing’s foreign ministry, announced at a press conference that China was ready for “friendly cooperation with Afghanistan.”
