China does not intend to build a military base in Afghanistan, a top diplomat maintained in the face of conflicting reports.
“We have checked on this report and it is not true,” Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying said during Wednesday’s briefing, according to the official transcript.
Hua’s denial contradicts an initial report that the China would build a base and eventually deploy several hundred troops to the Wakhan Corridor, a spur of territory that abuts against Chinese and Pakistani territory. The confusion follows months of reports of China’s interest in military expansion in Afghanistan and Pakistan, as well as Russian and Chinese concerns about terrorism in the region.
“There will be no Chinese military personnel of any kind on Afghan soil at any time,” the Afghan embassy in Beijing told the South China Morning Post.
Hua rebuffed the story entirely. "Since the construction and training, this situation, it doesn't exist – it's not true,” Reuters quoted her as saying, although the comment does not appear in the Foreign Ministry’s official transcript. “So anything related naturally is not true.”
But the Afghan embassy was less absolute, telling the South China Morning Post that China is helping Afghanistan set up a mountain brigade in the north to help fight terrorism.
Russia and China have discussed the possibility of taking a larger role in Afghanistan, citing the persistence of terrorist groups in the country.
“We must redouble our efforts to preclude the proliferation of conflicts from Afghanistan and to promote a political settlement of the Afghan crisis,” Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said at the Shanghai Cooperation Organization summit in April.
But U.S. officials and analysts believe that Russia in particular has been supporting the Taliban as a counter both to the United States and the Islamic State.
“I'm afraid Pakistan and Iran might try to sell Russia and China on [what they see as] the 'lesser of two evils,’” Behnam Ben Taleblu, a research fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, told the Washington Examiner.
