BEIJING: The withdrawal of US troops from Afghanistan and seemingly unstoppable march of the Taliban opens a strategic door to China that is laden with both risk and opportunity. China abhors a power vacuum, especially on its borders, and maintaining stability after decades of war in its western neighbour will be Beijing’s paramount consideration. But if stability requires a Taliban-dominated government, an equal concern would be the support such an administration might provide to Muslim separatists in China’s Xinjiang region. Communist Party leaders in Beijing and the fundamentalist Taliban have little ideological common ground, but analysts say shared pragmatism could see mutual self-interest trump sensitive differences. “For China, the risk does not come from who holds the power in Afghanistan, but from the risk of persistent instability,” Fan Hongda, a Middle East specialist at the Shanghai International Studies University, said. Afghanistan shares only a small 76-kil­om­etre (47-mile) border with China, at high altitude and without a road crossing point. But the frontier is a big concern because it runs alongside Xinjiang, and Beijing fears its neighbour being used as a staging ground for Uyghur separatists from the sensitive region. “China can deal with the Taliban... but they still find the Taliban’s religious agenda and motivations...