Bangladesh does not believe that the Chinese President’s visit will impact on relations with other countries, particularly neighbouring India.
“We don’t think so,” foreign minister Abul Hassan Mahmood Ali said in response to a question at a press briefing ahead of Xi Jinping’s two-day Bangladesh visit on Friday, the first by any Chinese President in three decades.
The question came as a Chinese newspaper Global Times in an editorial wrote that closer ties between Beijing and Dhaka may put pressure on New Delhi to rethink its strategy in South Asia and encourage it to better its relations with Beijing.
According to the daily, India need not be “jealous” of increasing ties between Dhaka and Beijing and it was wrong to think that Xi’s trip to Bangladesh was “to snatch the South Asian country from the embrace of New Delhi”.
The foreign minister termed the visit “historic” and said Bangladesh was still following the foreign policy principle set by the country’s founding father Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, which was “friendship to all, malice to none”.
He said Bangladesh expected more than 25 deals on different sectors, including trade, investment, communication, infrastructure development, railway and agriculture, to be signed during the visit.
Beijing termed the president’s visit a “milestone” and said he would push forward cooperation within the framework of China’s ‘belt and road initiative’.
The ‘One Belt, One Road’ initiative that promotes regional and cross-continental connectivity between China and Eurasia is the centrepiece of China’s economic diplomacy.
Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina in an interview with China’s state-run news agency Xinhua expressed confidence that the visit would usher in “a new era of intensive cooperation” in trade, investment and other sectors between the two countries.
She also hailed the China-proposed Belt and Road initiative, and said Bangladesh was also working to connect growth centres of the country with the rest of the region in South Asia and create a single economic contiguity between South Asia and Southeast Asia.
And this “would be host to greater integration with East Asia and connect the three ecosystems to the rest of the world through our seaports in the south”, she added.
Xi, during his visit, will meet his counterpart President Mohammad Abdul Hamid and will hold bilateral talks with the Prime Minister. Speaker of the Parliament Shirin Sharmin Chaudhury will also meet him.
The President will receive him at the airport at 11:4Oam through providing the visitor with state honours.
Xi will leave for India to attend the BRICS summit in Goa on Saturday morning after laying floral wreaths at the National Martyrs Memorial in Savar.
Source: Bd news24
