Yeah about that.
China can't just waltz into Afghanistan. They have to go through some narrow mountain passes in very specific routes. Aka their whole invasion route is a series of massive easy to attack choke points. And in the highest mountain range on Earth to boot. Add in the fact the last time China attempted mountain combat they got their asses handed to them by India. It adds up to Babies first Afghan Adventure being a massive disaster for the CCP.
That would have been terrifying if the Taliban were the Austrian, Swiss or Greek army.
In the India situation, that was a politically sensitive skirmish which is ridiculous by most standards because even small arms weren't used, it was a literal melee.
With Taliban, it would have been a full gloves off situation, with artillery preparation and air support.
This is all assuming of course the Chinese don't already have an agreement with the Taliban through Pakistan. If all they need is the Taliban to operate and protect their facilities with a 30/40 profit sharing agreement, I don't see the Taliban particularly objecting to getting a billion dollars a year. Especially if their Pakistani allies also pressure them because a mine is a big payday to some Pakistani company too.
China doesn't really have any objectives that really need troops outside of maybe facility guards to protect Chinese engineers and such. They may have a pro Taliban stance now, depending how true the talk of Pakistan being pro Taliban is, and as an anti American thing, but ideologically they don't really have a dog over who wins the civil war. They can negotiate and work with either. They're may be a couple of Chinese businessmen still lying around who were dealing with them back in the 1990s when they took over.
And yeah, reading the article, the $64 billion seems to mostly be to build infrastructure integrating Afghanistan into Pakistan. The big specific project seems to be a road between Kabul and Peshawar, a Pakistani city. So, the basic plan seems to be to integrate Afghanistan into the Chinese sphere through Pakistan. And they've already signaled the willingness to throw billions of dollars at the Taliban.
The question therefore seems to be more how much Pakistan can achieve in Afghanistan with Chinese support.
Yeah, Pakistan is the man behind the curtain in the whole Afghanistan situation since ages. The Taliban do not exist without Pakistan's permission. How much would it cost Pakistan politically to withdraw it is another matter, but as long as they don't, no one can eradicate the Taliban in Afghanistan - at worst, when going gets tough they regroup with their clansmen in Pakistan and wait out until the other side gets less vigilant or distracted by some other events in the world.
It is also a known fact that Pakistan is an ally of China, and it cannot afford not to be, economically and strategically (fellow enemy of India). The west has since a long time (including when Soviets were fighting in Afghanistan) bribed Pakistan to be more neutral, but the bribes buy only temporary and limited loyalty, as we saw with the whole Bin Laden affair, and on account of its position China can also make exceptionally persuasive offers.
As such, unless China gets too greedy or Pakistan too unstable or obstructive, they have good chances to work something out.
Unlike USA or Soviet Union, the China-Pakistan alliance have little to no political need to set up some kind of civilizational-cultural change in Afghanistan (much like USA needed to try make it a at least somewhat liberal democratic, Soviets had to try make it a socialist republic), which is a red line to the Taliban and the populations they recruit from. They don't care and they don't need it anyway - Pakistan has the same barbarians running the border area on their side, and as for how much China cares about what happens in their satellite states, see NK. They only want Afghanistan for its strategic location in military and economic route aspects, and resource extraction. The rest they will be willing to give up to whoever can arrange safety to the previous endeavors, and unlike USA they also allow themselves to engage in
outright bribery reconstruction work to sweeten that deal.
And if the Taliban suddenly decide that the deal is not good enough for them, then by that time China may well be deployed in enough of force to switch the carrot to a stick and implement their experiences and allied expertise from Xinjiang, Tibet, Myanmar and North Korea upon that land aswell.