When Chinese President Xi Jinping visited Dhaka in 2016, he pledged $24.5 billion in soft loans, the largest investment commitment in Bangladesh’s history.
Eight years later, ousted Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina returned from Beijing with just 1bn yuan ($136m), far short of the $5bn in budget support she had sought. The gulf between these two figures reveals the pragmatic and harsh reality of the bilateral relationship.
It also explains why Prime Minister Tarique Rahman’s visit to Beijing this week represents a calculated reset.
Under Hasina, Dhaka became economically entwined with Beijing while remaining politically subservient to New Delhi on core regional security matters. China adjusted accordingly, treating Bangladesh more as a dependable debtor than a strategic priority.
Tarique Rahman arrives in Beijing without this geopolitical baggage. This political blank slate may prove more consequential for future ties than any immediate financial package.
Domestic political rhetoric has often framed the BNP as more cautious toward China. History suggests otherwise. The party’s founder, Ziaur Rahman, was an architect of formal diplomatic ties with Beijing in the 1970s, and subsequent BNP administrations maintained close relations.
Regardless of who occupies the prime minister’s office in Dhaka, China’s economic footprint in Bangladesh has grown consistently. For 15 consecutive years, China has been Bangladesh’s largest trading partner and its primary source of external financing.
Between 2015 and 2025, Chinese entities poured over $30bn into Bangladeshi infrastructure and manufacturing. By the time Chief Adviser Muhammad Yunus met Xi last year, cumulative Chinese investment had approached $42bn.
A tangible symbol of this economic partnership is finally gaining momentum. The Chinese Economic and Industrial Zone in Anwara, near Chattogram, was first proposed in 2014 but languished for a decade.
A revised development proposal cleared Bangladesh’s Planning Commission recently, and the associated infrastructure financing package has been fast-tracked ahead of Tarique Rahman's visit.
The economic stakes are high. The Bangladesh Economic Zones Authority estimates the completed zone could attract $1.5 billion in foreign direct investment and create 200,000 jobs, leveraging its proximity to Chattogram Port and the Chinese-built Karnaphuli River Tunnel.
For a new administration eager to establish its economic credentials, converting this long-delayed project into an active industrial hub is a top priority.
Beneath the commercial surface lies a robust defense and maritime partnership that has survived multiple changes of government.
Under a 2002 defense cooperation agreement, China became the primary supplier of hardware to the Bangladeshi military. This includes naval frigates, corvettes, and two submarines now stationed at a purpose-built coastal facility constructed with Chinese assistance.
Dhaka's defense procurement is a matter of maritime necessity rather than secrecy. Bangladesh sits on critical Indian Ocean trade routes and requires the naval capability to secure its waters.
China has consistently proven the most willing partner to support this modernization, which now includes cooperation on drone technology and next-generation aircraft.
What defines the relationship is its institutional resilience. Beijing has decoupled its diplomacy from Dhaka’s domestic political cycles. Since 2024, delegations from both the BNP and Jamaat-e-Islami have visited Beijing at the invitation of the Communist Party of China (CPC).
Last year, a 22-member cross-party delegation toured China, followed by a high-level BNP delegation led by Mirza Fakhrul Islam Alamgir, which formalized regular inter-party exchanges with Vice-President Han Zheng.
This engagement extends beyond politics. Continuous exchanges between civil society, academia, and a cohort of roughly 20,000 Bangladeshi students currently enrolled in Chinese universities provide a generational foundation to the relationship that transcends short-term capital flows.
Strategic geography further cements these ties. The long-standing dispute over the Teesta River remains a sensitive domestic issue in Bangladesh, where decades of talks with India have failed to yield a water-sharing treaty.
China’s proposal for a comprehensive river restoration and management project offers a technical alternative that carries significant political weight in Bangladesh’s northern districts.
Over the longer term, Beijing’s proposed transport corridor linking Yunnan province to the Bay of Bengal through Myanmar and Bangladesh offers a structural link between two of Asia’s fastest-growing sub-regions.
Tarique Rahman’s decision to prioritise Beijing for an early official visit underscores the multifaceted nature of the relationship. The industrial zones satisfy immediate economic needs; the defense ties address long-term security calculus; and decades of bureaucratic, educational, and political exchanges ensure continuity.
Rather than a sudden geopolitical shift, the current diplomatic flurry represents the addition of another layer to an already deeply entrenched partnership. The bilateral architecture between Dhaka and Beijing has become sufficiently resilient to outlast the political fortunes of any single administration.
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Md Talebur Islam Rupom is a geopolitical analyst, international relations commentator, columnist, and researcher affiliated with the Silk Road School (School of Global Leadership) at Renmin University of China. He can be reached at taleburislamrupom@gmail.com