China Seminar | 14 March 2013

Dateline: Afghanistan – Perspectives from a Chinese Reporter's Notebook

Afghanistan has long been at the crossroad linking East and West. The land-locked country has been the hot spot for superpowers such as former Soviet Union and Great Britain. In 2001, the U.S. invaded Afghanistan, toppling the Taliban regime for sheltering the 9-11 mastermind Osama Bin Laden. Since then, in the name of anti-terrorism, U.S.-led coalition troops have conducted military operations in Afghanistan and its border areas with Pakistan. As U.S forces prepare to withdraw from Afghanistan, a Xinhua News Agency correspondent provides a journalist’s up close perspective on Afghanistan’s role in the region and why it has been called the grave for Empires; the Sino-Afghan relationship; and the reconstruction work and withdrawal of U.S. coalition troops.

LIN Jing (Lynn) earned a B.A. degree from Communication University of China in 2004, majoring in Pashto language (the official language of Afghanistan) and Afghan culture and history. From 2007 to 2009, Lin Jing was a correspondent and deputy bureau chief in Xinhua’s Kabul Bureau in Afghanistan. She covered the 2009 Afghan presidential elections and the reconstruction process in the post-war country. Afghan vice-President Abdul Karim Halili and the Foreign Ministry awarded Xinhua’s Kabul Bureau a medal for just and unbiased report. She is currently with the Parvin Fellows Program and works in the International News Department of Xinhua News Agency.