With American troops pulling out of Afghanistan as part of a wider long term US retreat from south and central Asia, China is waiting to fill the vacuum. It has brought regional countries together to encourage peace, invested in mineral and oil extraction in a country where hardly anyone else will invest a penny, and put pressure on its ally, Pakistan, to stop helping the Taliban. According to the Wall Street Journal, China even hosted a delegation of Afghan Taliban officials in December, “to discuss the possibility of opening talks with the Afghan government”.
作为美国从中南亚撤退的长期整体计划的一部分，美军正在撤出阿富汗，而中国正在等待填补美国留下的真空。中国已牵头让这一地区的多个国家坐到一起探讨如何促进和平，在一个几乎没有其他人愿意投一分钱的国家投资了矿产和石油开采，并已向其盟友巴基斯坦施压、要求后者停止帮助塔利班(Taliban)。据华尔街日报(WSJ)报道，中国在去年12月甚至接待了一个阿富汗塔利班官员代表团，“以探讨后者与阿富汗政府展开谈判的可能性”。
This is important for the west, which is in the middle of a strategic retreat from the region even though international terrorism is still a threat. China has never played such a diplomatic role outside its borders before and success in Afghanistan could conceivably encourage Beijing to play a more positive role with North Korea.
上述动向对西方非常重要。尽管国际恐怖主义依然是个威胁，但西方却在从这一地区战略撤退。中国此前从未在国外扮演过这样的外交角色，如果其在阿富汗的努力取得成功，也许会鼓励北京方面在朝鲜问题中发挥更加积极的作用。