A Neighbor of Neighbors

This book explores China's role, past, present and future, in Afghanistan. The chaotic withdrawal of the United States from Afghanistan in August 2021 after a 20-year intervention left China as the biggest regional country capable of playing a critical role in future Afghan affairs dominated by the Taliban. What is China’s policy toward Afghanistan after the US withdrawal? How will it seek to increase its influence? To answer these pressing questions, it is necessary to understand how China’s policy toward Afghanistan has evolved historically. This book examines China’s relations with Afghanistan from a combination of theoretical and historical perspectives, highlighting the goals of amity, security, and influence in Chinese policy. This is a study that will be of great value to scholars of Asian politics and geopolitics, and the emerging order in Central Asia.

Feng Zhang is an Associate Research Scholar in East Asian Studies at Yale University’s MacMillan Center for International and Area Studies. A political scientist and interdisciplinary scholar, he specializes in China’s foreign policy, Asian international relations, and international relations theory. He is the author of Chinese Hegemony: Grand Strategy and International Institutions in East Asian History (Stanford, 2015). He coauthored two books with Richard Ned Lebow: Taming Sino-American Rivalry (Oxford, 2020) and Justice and International Order: East and West (Oxford, 2022). His peer-reviewed articles have appeared in a range of disciplinary and area studies journals, and his commentary has been featured in outlets including Foreign Affairs and Foreign Policy. He previously held teaching positions at Tsinghua University, Murdoch University, the Australian National University, and the South China University of Technology. In 2024, he was a visiting scholar at Yale Law School’s Paul Tsai China Center.