China Is Winning the Information War in Afghanistan — And Using It To Humiliate America

When the last American military transport lifted off from Kabul’s airport in August 2021, Beijing moved swiftly to capitalize on Washington’s chaotic retreat. Chinese state media outlets launched a coordinated messaging campaign portraying the withdrawal as evidence of American unreliability, highlighting images of desperate Afghans clinging to departing aircraft.Nearly four years later, that messaging effort has evolved into near-total information dominance in Afghan media spaces, following the Trump administration’s effective dismantling of America’s international public broadcasting infrastructure in 2025. With the Voice of America having shed 85 percent of its staff and Chinese state media expanding its Kabul operations, Beijing now operates largely unopposed in shaping the narrative — not just about America’s failures, but about China’s role as Afghanistan’s reliable partner. “China’s expansion into Afghanistan’s media environment has filled the repressive silence created by the Taliban’s brutal crackdown on independent media following Washington’s withdrawal,” a senior analyst for the China Program at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, Jack Burnham, tells the New York Sun. VOA once reached 7.3 million Afghan adults weekly through radio, television, and digital platforms. The Taliban ended its contract with VOA in late 2022 and took control of the broadcaster’s FM and medium wave transmitters inside Afghanistan. While VOA maintained alternative delivery through satellite and shortwave, its reach in the country was constrained.In March 2025, the Trump administration compounded America’s dwindling influence when it signed an executive order reducing VOA’s workforce to 81 people from 1,300 employees globally. For Afghanistan, operations are maintained by two staff members for Dari and Pashto language programming.At the same time, Afghanistan’s media contracted significantly as a result of Taliban restrictions and funding shortages, with hundreds of outlets closing and thousands of journalists losing employment. Enter Chinese state media outlets, which expanded operations amid economic pressures that made Chinese funding for Afghan journalists attractive despite editorial restrictions. Some Afghan television stations have broadcast documentaries about China’s Belt and Road Initiative. In August 2025, Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi visited Kabul to discuss mining rights and Afghanistan’s potential formal participation in the infrastructure initiative. Unsurprisingly, he received favorable coverage in Chinese-supported Afghan media outlets.Research published in 2025 by the Center for Social and Economic Progress found that China, through financial support, content partnerships, and training programs for Afghan journalists, has expanded its own media footprint in the Central Asian nation. Chinese outlets have produced content highlighting Beijing’s role in the region while largely avoiding coverage of poverty, political repression, or instability under Taliban rule. “Echoing its messaging across Central Asia, China has promoted its vision of ‘development,’ broadcasting state-sponsored narratives of its Belt and Road Initiative while tacitly legitimizing the Taliban’s authoritarian rule,” Mr. Burnham says. Targeting Taiwan and BeyondChina has also used the Afghanistan withdrawal in its messaging directed at Taiwan and other regions. The state-controlled Global Times drew connections between the two situations, with editor Hu Xijin stating on social media that Taiwan authorities “must be trembling” after Kabul’s fall. On a separate occasion, a Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson, Hua Chunying, referenced the Afghan teenager who died falling from a departing American aircraft, Zaki Anwari, in 2021, stating the “American myth” was collapsing and “more and more people are awakening.”Analysis by Taiwan’s Information Environment Research Center identified at least 84 distinct narratives that Chinese actors use to promote skepticism about American reliability, positioning Beijing as a source of stability while portraying Washington as creating instability.A 2022 Pentagon report to Congress also stated that China “employed multiple diplomatic tools in an attempt to erode U.S. and partner influence,” including “highlighting the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan.”When the Trump administration ordered VOA’s restructuring in March 2025, Chinese state media outlets characterized it as an American retreat from soft power competition. Czech Foreign Minister Jan Lipavský cited his concern, noting that Radio Free Europe represents “one of the few credible sources in dictatorships like Iran, Belarus, and Afghanistan.”As Washington addresses significant power competition priorities, the Afghanistan media landscape illustrates how information spaces can tilt when one power reduces its presence while another expands operations.The question facing American policymakers is whether current resource allocations adequately address information competition in regions where American influence has traditionally been strong.“Beijing’s role in Afghanistan is a template for its approach to filling the gaps ceded by Washington, not in offering a full-throated argument for autocracy, but in ensuring that democracy suffers a quiet death in the darkness,” Mr. Burnham added.

China Is Winning the Information War in Afghanistan — And Using It To Humiliate America

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