I EXPLAINED THIS IN THE LAST POST

 NOW, THE NYT MERELY CONFIRMS WHAT I HAD SAID, YESTERDAY:

The stunning seizure of Afghanistan by the Taliban poses many significant geopolitical questions — chief among them who will fill the vacuum left by the withdrawal of the United States and its NATO allies from the country after 20 years.

The Taliban are on a P.R. offensive to try to show that they are a legitimate, representative governing power that wants to have good relations with its neighbors. The group has sought out its richest neighbor, China, in particular, to emphasize that message.

Yet even before the Taliban had stormed Kabul, Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar, the deputy leader of the Taliban, met with China’s foreign minister and called China “a reliable friend of the Afghan people.”

To explain more fully how China views its role in this new Afghanistan, we sought out Zhou Bo, who was a senior colonel in the People's Liberation Army until his retirement in 2020. He is now a senior fellow at the Center for International Security and Strategy at Tsinghua University in Beijing. Though he is writing in a personal capacity, Zhou is an authoritative voice reflecting the P.L.A.’s thinking on Chinese and international security.

In a guest essay, Zhou describes how China bided its time as the United States fell deeper into the Afghanistan quagmire. “China has kept a low profile in the country since the U.S. invasion, not wishing to play second fiddle to the United States in any power politics,” he writes. “All the while, Beijing was fostering stronger trade relations, eventually becoming one of Afghanistan’s largest trading partners.”