Pakitan PM Nawaz Sharif delivering a speech during the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor Ceremony on Nov. 13, 2016. (Photo : Getty Images)
China's defense ministry on Thursday rebuffed reports that Chinese troops were conducting patrols in Afghanistan, saying the two countries were only carrying out counter-terrorism operations along their common border.
The Central Asia-Caucasus Analyst, a think-tank focusing on the Central Asian region, said in a a report on its website earlier this month that Chinese military vehicles were found inside Afghanistan conducting joint patrols alongside their Afghan counterparts.
That followed similar reports of China's military patrols inside Afghanistan by Indian media outlets in November.
Defense Ministry spokesman Ren Guoqiang said Chinese public security agencies had conducted joint counter-terrorism operations along the China-Afghanistan border.
"This is law enforcement bodies from China and Afghanistan, in accordance with a bilateral agreement on strengthening border law enforcement, conducting cooperation along the border so as to jointly carry out counter-terrorism and to fight against cross-border crime," Ren said in a monthly news briefing.
"Reports in foreign media of Chinese military vehicles patrolling inside Afghanistan do not accord with the facts," he added, largely repeating a similar statement the ministry made in November last year.
China and Afghanistan share a border stretching approximately 76 km (50 mi) across the rugged, mountainous regions of central Asia.
Beijing has long expressed concern over instability in Afghanistan and its potential to spill over the violence-prone Xinjiang region in China's far west.
Home to the Muslim Uighur minority, Xinjiang has experienced a series of terrorist attacks in recent years that the Chinese government has blamed on Islamist militants.
In response, Chinese law enforcement authorities have imposed increasingly stringent security measures including requiring Xinjiang residents to submit DNA samples in order to acquire travel documents and install satellite tracking devices on their vehicles.
China has also partnered with Pakistan and the United States to broker peace talks between the Afghan government and the Taliban, whose insurgency has raged on for 15 years.
