China will be ‘very careful’ dealing with the Taliban government

[superadmin]

China will be ‘very careful’ dealing with the Taliban government, former U.S. ambassador says

• China will tread cautiously in Afghanistan and its main goal would be to work with the Taliban on border security, according to Max Baucus, a former U.S. ambassador to Beijing under ex-President Barack Obama.
  
• China will not follow in the U.S. footsteps to try and take over Afghanistan, according to Baucus.
  
• “Their major concern is East Turkestan. They are going to work with the Taliban to help make sure there’s very little terrorism from Afghanistan,” Baucus said, referring to the Uyghur extremist group called the East Turkestan Islamic Movement.
  

China will tread cautiously in Afghanistan and its main goal would be to work with the Taliban on border security, a former U.S. ambassador to Beijing said Friday.

The world’s second-largest economy is one of the few countries that established friendly relations with the Taliban even before the militant group took over Afghanistan in a matter of days last month.

“I expect that China will be very careful,” Max Baucus, who was the U.S. ambassador to China between February 2014 and January 2017 under former President Barack Obama, said on CNBC’s “Squawk Box Asia.”

“They will not try to take over the country as other countries, including the U.S., have,” he said, adding that China is worried about potential terror attacks within its borders or on Chinese targets in the region, carried out from Afghan soil.

- More -