Anti-pandemic partnership paves the way for deeper Beijing-Dhaka cooperation

When China was caught unaware by coronavirus and became the first country to be hit by the disease, Bangladesh extended support to the people of China in its limited capacity China, meanwhile, demonstrated its support for Bangladesh by standing beside it in its fight against the deadly virus.

At the onset, China donated rapid detection reagents, medical protective gowns, surgical masks, N95 masks, and other gear to Bangladesh. Apart from the Chinese government, the Jack Ma Foundation, the Alibaba Foundation, and the Bangladesh-China Business and Industry Association assisted the country to curb the pandemic.

Chinese companies and enterprises working in Bangladesh such as China Machinery Import & Export Co, China Machinery Engineering Corporation, Padma Bridge, the Padma Bridge Railway Link Project, the Multi-lane Road Tunnel Project under River Karnaphuli, China-Bangladesh Friendship Exhibition Center Project, the Chinese Enterprises Association in Bangladesh, Bangladesh-China Friendship Center, China Railway Group Limited, Overseas Chinese Association in Bangladesh, Huawei Technologies Bangladesh Limited also helped Bangladesh fight the pandemic.

A 10-member team of Chinese medical experts also visited Bangladesh. In their two-week stay in the country, the experts visited designated hospitals, quarantine and testing centers. They shared their experiences with Bangladeshi counterparts and made calibrated propositions for containment and treatment of the pandemic during the visit.

When global demands for vaccines reached a fever pitch and so did the surge of infections of the virus, the foreign ministers of China, Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Nepal, Pakistan, and Sri Lanka held a video conference on COVID-19 on April 27, 2021.

At the conference, Wang Yi, the foreign minister of China, expressed his country’s keenness to promote vaccine cooperation with other countries through flexible methods such as free aid, commercial procurement, and filling and production of vaccines, under the framework of the six-nation cooperation mechanism, so that people in South Asia can obtain more diversified and stable vaccine supplies. Wang's proposals were supported by the other foreign ministers.

After the conference, China gifted Bangladesh around 8.9 million doses of vaccines, while Bangladesh bought millions of doses from Sinopharm and Sinovac under bilateral agreements. Bangladesh has so far administered millions of doses of vaccines and 60.5 percent of them are Chinese vaccines.

Thus Bangladesh and China have worked closely on the anti-pandemic fight in the past year. By far, both countries have contained the virus pretty well. Bangladesh is also back on the track of steady growth. This is an outstanding example of bilateral cooperation between Beijing and Dhaka.

Analysts are of the view that the anti-pandemic cooperation represents a perspective to evaluate China-Bangladesh bilateral relations. The fruitful partnership in fighting coronavirus has paved the way for further deepening bilateral cooperation between the two strategic partners on all fronts in the coming years.

In particular, China can help Bangladesh achieve its goal to be a developed country by 2041. Economists think that to reach its goal, Bangladesh has to raise and maintain its GDP growth to more than 8 percent in the coming years, which is possible only by achieving remarkable progress in its infrastructure, exports, remittance, and some other major sectors. China can help Bangladesh in infrastructure development, diversifying export goods and markets, and producing skilled human resources to explore new remittance markets.

Under the arrangements of win-win cooperation, the gas, oil, and energy sectors of Bangladesh can attract more investments from China. Chinese entrepreneurs can also invest in sectors such as tourism and hospitality, river dredging, automobiles, agriculture and irrigation, and building airports, highways, and railways.

They can also benefit from investments in some growing sectors such as IT, shipbuilding, agro-based industries, leather and leather products, pharmaceuticals, ceramics, frozen fish, plastic, furniture, home textile, and jute and jute products.

The success of the partnership between Bangladesh and China in the fight against the pandemic has created broader avenues for the two strategic partners to navigate through under their win-win cooperation policy.

Musundali Bhuiyan is a Bangladeshi journalist and columnist based in Beijing.

The opinions expressed here are those of the writer and do not necessarily represent the views of China Daily and China Daily website.

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