Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi lectured American Secretary of State Antony Blinken in a phone call Monday for the allegedly “hasty” American withdrawal from Afghanistan and warned him not to seek help from Beijing on the issue while working to “contain and suppress China.”
Wang’s alleged comments surfaced in the Global Times, a Chinese regime media outlet, and contrasted significantly to the brief description of the conversation published by the U.S. State Department.
“Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken spoke today with PRC [China] State Councilor and Foreign Minister Wang Yi about developments in Afghanistan,” the State Department noted on the call read, “including the security situation and our respective efforts to bring U.S. and PRC citizens to safety.”
The conversation occurred in the context of the Taliban’s seizure of Kabul, Afghanistan’s capital, on Sunday, which prompted the fall of the Afghan federal government. The radical jihadist organization launched tens of thousands of attacks beginning in the spring, following President Joe Biden’s announcement that he would break a deal between the prior administration of Donald Trump and the Taliban that would have seen U.S. troops leave the country on May 1. The offensive resulted in dozens of largely bloodless victories, as Afghan soldiers fled the battlefield and local civilian leaders surrendered.
The Communist Party of China, which shares a border with Afghanistan, has hosted talks with the Taliban and has expressed optimism at the return of the radical jihadists to the helm of the nation.
“It’s a sunny day in Kabul,” a profile of the city following the Taliban’s return in the Global Times on Monday began.
The Global Times reported that Blinken requested the discussion with Wang and that Wang used it to condemn the Biden administration for planning to withdraw all military forces from Afghanistan by August 31.
“The hasty U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan has caused a severely adverse impact on the situation in Afghanistan and it would not be responsible if it continues to create new problems,” the Global Times paraphrased Wang as saying on Tuesday. The propaganda outlet detailed that Wang warned Blinken that he should not reach out to Beijing for help if Washington attempts “to contain and suppress China” and that Blinken should “follow a rational and pragmatic policy toward China.”
Wang allegedly urged Blinken to direct the Biden administration to “play a constructive role in helping Afghanistan maintain stability, prevent chaos and rebuild peacefully.” He also allegedly said he hoped to see the Taliban establish “an open and inclusive political framework in accordance with its own national situations,” reflecting the Taliban’s own propaganda on its conquest.
Suhail Shaheen, one of the Taliban’s top spokesmen, told the Associated Press this week that the jihadists hope to create an “open, inclusive Islamic government.” The United Nations Security Council, where China is a permanent member, also used this language in a statement on Monday.
The Global Times claimed that Blinken responded to Wang’s lecture by thanking China for its growing involvement in Afghanistan and stating he “hopes that China will play an important part in the issue.”
The State Department has not publicly challenged the Global Times‘ depiction of the conversation at press time.
The Chinese state media version of the talk recalls Blinken’s past encounters with Wang, which have concluded repeatedly with Blinken leaving unquestioned challenges to American values and hectoring from an apparently authoritative position on the part of the top Chinese diplomat. The most prominent of these encounters occurred in March, when Blinken and National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan met with Wang and one of China’s top Politburo members, Yang Jiechi, in Alaska. The meeting did not have a defined agenda, allowing Yang to use his platform largely to condemn alleged human rights abuses in the United States.
“We hope the United States will do better on human rights,” Yang, representing a country currently conducting a genocide, told Blinken and Sullivan. “The challenges facing the United States in human rights are deep-seated. They did not just emerge over the past four years, such as ‘Black Lives Matter.'”
Neither American representative offered a robust challenge to this claim. The Chinese government viewed the encounter as such as success that Chinese companies sold commemorative tote bags and mobile phone cases featuring quotes by Yang at the meeting.
Shortly after the meeting, Blinken told reporters that he agreed with human rights criticisms of the United States, apparently a reference to the Alaska meeting.
“We will hear from some countries, as we do other years, that we have no right to criticize them because we have our own challenges to deal with,” Blinken said. “Well, we know we have work to do at home that includes addressing profound inequities, including systemic racism.”
Blinken appeared to spend much of Monday on the phone with his counterparts in countries bordering Afghanistan. According to the State Department, Blinken spoke to Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov, Pakistani Foreign Minister Shah Mahmood Qureshi, and Indian External Affairs Minister Dr. S. Jaishankar, in addition to Wang. The readouts from those calls that the State Department published were almost identical and offered no concrete details, suggesting only that the two parties in each case discussed “developments in Afghanistan” and “Afghanistan and the developing situation there,” respectively.
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