"Speculation over Afghanistan's potential mineral wealth is just that--speculation. What we do know about the hard reality of the country's geography, infrastructure and development profile readily explains why we're still talking about Afghan mineral wealth in the realm of potential trillions--it might certainly be there, but no one's done the hard, serious work to find out for sure.  And China is certainly not going to be the one to do it. Chinese involvement in Afghanistan isn't going to be fueled by a desire to do serious survey and exploration work, building out roads and rail lines,...