The ministry published a position paper on Afghanistan ahead of the Meeting of the Foreign Ministers of Afghanistan's Neighboring Countries scheduled to take place in Samarkand on Thursday, with the ministers from Iran, Pakistan, Russia, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan also expected to attend the event.
"It is a widely-held view in the international community that, by seizing Afghanistan's overseas assets and imposing unilateral sanctions, the US, which created the Afghan issue in the first place, is the biggest external factor that hinders substantive improvement in the humanitarian situation in Afghanistan," the ministry said in a statement.
It also urged the US to "live up to its commitments and responsibilities" to Afghanistan by immediately lifting sanctions and providing necessary humanitarian assistance to the country.
To help Kabul achieve stability and peaceful development, other states should abandon the practice of double standards as regards the political situation in Afghanistan and not attempt to deploy military facilities there, the Chinese ministry stated.
"It is a shared view of regional countries that the military interference and 'democratic transformation' by external forces in Afghanistan over the past 20-odd years have inflicted enormous losses and pain on Afghanistan," the statement said.
In the paper, Beijing also expressed its support for efforts to implement plans and measures that are conducive to the political settlement in Afghanistan through existing mechanisms and platforms, including the Shanghai Cooperation Organization.
The Afghan government led by the Taliban* came to power in the fall of 2021 after the withdrawal of US troops from the country and the collapse of the US-backed government. The Taliban takeover has heightened the fears of the Central Asian nations concerning the spread of radical fundamental Islamic ideas, as happened in 1996 when the Taliban first came to power in Afghanistan for five years.
*under UN sanctions for terrorism