China-Pakistan Engagement with the Post-Taliban Afghanistan: Assessing Security, Political and Economic Interests and its Implementation

This article explores Pakistan-China relations with Afghanistan after the Taliban came to power for the second time in mid-2021. The research assesses China and Pakistan's relationship with the Taliban regime based on three important factors: security, political, and economic considerations. As argued by the author, Pakistan, and China share comparable approaches to the Taliban government, as both countries want the Taliban to be more pragmatic while dealing with both domestic and international communities. The present research used both secondary sources, such as scholarly articles, and primary sources, such as government press releases and policy standpoints. Both countries prioritize security concerns over economic participation, and the abovementioned elements have been investigated further in the paper. This article uses an exploratory method to interpret the data.