By Tom Fowdy
As reported in The Diplomat: "Bangladeshi Prime Minister Tarique Rahman's visit to China on June 22-26 saw the two sides sign 17 bilateral instruments." During the summit between the two countries, they agreed to elevate "their comprehensive strategic cooperative partnership to jointly build a China-Bangladesh community with a shared future," committed to "a 2+2 dialogue mechanism involving diplomacy and defence, and announced plans to implement a Bangladesh-China-Myanmar Economic Corridor."
The meeting has come as a strategic shock to neighbouring India. Traditionally, New Delhi has always been the de facto "overlord" of Bangladesh, the giant having long operated a "backyard policy" which has tried to force other South Asian countries (excluding Pakistan) to take sides. However, India's protection of disgraced former Bangladeshi President Sheikh Hasina, who was overthrown in a 2024 uprising and violently oppressed protests, has led to Dhaka recalibrating relations and asserting more independence in its foreign policy, and much to India's dismay, China is an important port of that.
It should not be surprising, for whether India likes it or not, the "smaller" countries of South Asia see Beijing as a critical partner for their own economic and infrastructure development. While New Delhi has often attempted to suppress this, such as forcing China out of infrastructure projects in Sri Lanka and Nepal, ultimately its own hand has not been strong enough on the premise Beijing's offers are just too beneficial and India does not have the same resources. As a result, many of these countries undertake balancing acts as opposed to offering overt loyalty to either party, and of course, one of the key grievances the Bangladeshi public had with former President Hasina is that she was far too loyal to India.
As a result, Dhaka has taken the strategic decision to deepen its relationship with China. Beyond securing more geopolitical autonomy for itself, its own reasons are largely economic. First of all, Bangladesh is an emerging economy, one that will be very important in the future. With a population base of 177 million, of which is mostly youthful, the development potential of the country is very strong. Although it has experienced turbulence in recent years, as a general trend, Bangladesh has been the most successful economy in South Asia and its GDP per capita has expanded faster than India or Pakistan. The country has the chance to become a manufacturing giant in its own right.
But how, of course, do you achieve this? Bangladesh is under enormous pressure to create infrastructure, precisely because it is one of the world's most densely populated countries, concentrated across the massive Ganges delta which is prone to flooding. Dhaka, as it is already the second most populated city on the planet with 36 million inhabitants. While this is large in terms of potential, the human strain is enormous. The country needs roads, railways, bridges, electricity, and sanitation. As it is, even in the Indian loyalist era, Bangladesh has relied on China to establish many of these projects precisely as few others are equipped to do so, but this is only one layer.
The second layer is trade. Bangladesh desires to export more, and what better way to do that are there than to embed itself into Chinese supply chains? As China has advanced up the technological ladder, as production costs have increased, and the US has sought to keep China out, the strategic purpose of 3rdcountries embedding themselves into the supply chain, occupying assembly roles, has increased accordingly. China exports goods and components into the country, the other country utilises its cheaper labour force to assemble and finish, and then ultimately exports it. As a result, a key aspect of the China-Bangladesh relationship has become the proposed development of Mongla Port. Beijing has always focused on developing critical ports as a part of its geopolitical strategy, not only so it can export through other countries, but potentially import through them as well.
Why so? As a part of the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), China has sought to develop new overland import and export routes with its neighbours in order to diversify its geopolitical leverage and prevent other countries from blockading its coastline or closing down critical chokepoints such as the Strait of Malacca. This was the primary reason it created the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) and the Gwadar port. However, with Bangladesh, Beijing now aspires to create the China-Bangladesh-Myanmar economic corridor. This is, of course, not without its challenges, amidst civil war in Myanmar itself, but Beijing nonetheless eyes direct logistical integration with Bangladesh so it can establish another outlet into the Indian Ocean.
This of course has the immediate geopolitical consequence of loosening India's own leverage over Dhaka and increasing China's maritime presence on its own periphery, but for Bangladesh itself, this is empowering, because its ultimate goal is to neither be subservient to New Delhi or Beijing, but to more readily advance its own prosperity. Thus, what we see here is a grand balancing act, yet ultimately for outsider parties such as the US this is bad news, because the countries of Asia see far too much value in China to ever truly commitment to its containment. The rise of China can be the rise of Bangladesh.
The views do not necessarily reflect those of DotDotNews.
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