The Chinese Foreign Ministry reported that President Xi Jinping received credentials from 42 ambassadors to China on Tuesday, including Bilal Karimi, the Afghan ambassador sent by the Taliban government to Beijing. Chinese media described the event as "another step by the People's Republic of China towards good relations with Afghanistan."
Karimi previously served as the deputy spokesman for the Taliban government. When media reports emerged in December indicating that the new Afghan ambassador had begun work in Beijing, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Wang Wenbin did not directly answer whether this meant that Beijing would recognize the "Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan," merely stating that "China has always believed that Afghanistan should not be excluded from the international community."
In late December, Kazakhstan decided to remove the Taliban from its list of banned terrorist organizations, while the Azerbaijani Foreign Ministry announced plans to open an embassy in Afghanistan in 2024.
