Building Investment Environment In Afghanistan Under The Context Of Belt And Road Initiative:Opportunities And Challenges

Afghanistan and China have witnessed a great progress in their bilateral relations for the past few years.China has increased its investment in Afghanistan and became one of the largest foreign direct investors.On the other hand,China always kept a low profile positions on Afghanistan and their interests were more limited than other states.The Objective of this study is to analyze Sino-Afghan relationships in the context of China's Belt and Road Initiative to identify major challenges and opportunities associated with it.This paper initially seeks to examine how does China's Belt and Road Initiative provide benefits to both countries?How does China's Belt and Road Initiative pave the way for the investment and economic development in Afghanistan?Furthermore,this study attempts to explore that China's Belt and Road Initiative is an opportunity for both countries to deepen its economic links and political engagement through this ambitious initiative in order to promote bilateral trade and investment facilitation,infrastructure development,financial cooperation and people-to-people contact.Moreover,the study utilized qualitative research method and used several secondary sources such as books,reports;official documents,research papers and other articles from the recognized International journals for the purpose to answer the research questions.Besides this study used SWOT analysis to unpack the China's Belt and Road Initiative's strength and weaknesses and identifies the opportunities for both countries and the possible challenges that this initiative might face in Afghanistan.Developmental state theory is used to examine the phenomena in this study to obtain a theoretical framework for this research.