China has kept its border with Afghanistan closed despite the Taliban administration\u2019s completion of the Wakhan Road, conditioning any reopening of the crossing on security concerns being addressed. Beijing did not attend the road\u2019s inauguration ceremony on Oct. 4 and also declined to formally acknowledge the event diplomatically.<\/p>\n
Published images show that barbed wire, surveillance cameras and machine-gun bunkers remain in place on the Chinese side of the border. Satellite images dated Oct. 11 also show that the road built by the Taliban administration stretches to within a few dozen metres of the Chinese border; however, the infrastructure has so far made no change to the status of the crossing.<\/p>\n
Zhu Yongbiao, director of the Afghanistan Studies Centre at Lanzhou University in China, said the chances of reopening the Wakhan crossing were \u201cvery slim.\u201d According to him, Afghanistan\u2019s economic value to China is limited, while opening the route would bring heavy security and financial costs.<\/p>\n
Radio Free Europe\/Radio Liberty reported that Beijing\u2019s main concern is border security and the status of the East Turkistan Islamic Movement (ETIM), a group China considers a threat to security in Xinjiang. According to a report attributed to the United Nations in 2026, the group is active in Badakhshan.<\/p>\n
Zhu Yongbiao said the Taliban administration has complied with almost none of China\u2019s demands on how to deal with ETIM, and for that reason it is unlikely Beijing will make further concessions in the near future. In analyses published in Chinese media, the key question has also been framed as the Taliban administration\u2019s ability to control territory, prevent the operation of training camps and contain the risk of cross-border infiltration.<\/p>\n
The road was built by Afghan engineers at a cost of $5.6 million. The Taliban administration has presented it as evidence of its ability to develop infrastructure, but Ehsanullah Omrkhil, an Afghanistan researcher in Malaysia, said the route in its current state is largely symbolic and not ready for real trade.<\/p>\n
Meanwhile, Yar Mohammad, a local guide, told Radio Free Europe\/Radio Liberty that for residents of the area the Wakhan road is not only a transport route, but also a hope of reducing isolation and improving their lives. However, until China is satisfied with the security situation at the border, the road will remain unused for commercial purposes and, in practice, a dead-end route.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
China has kept its border with Afghanistan closed despite the completion of the Wakhan Road, citing security concerns over ETIM.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":23945,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[17,6,16],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-23946","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-important-news","category-international","category-secondary-headline"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/atlaspress.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23946","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/atlaspress.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/atlaspress.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/atlaspress.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/atlaspress.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=23946"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/atlaspress.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23946\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/atlaspress.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/23945"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/atlaspress.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=23946"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/atlaspress.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=23946"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/atlaspress.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=23946"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}