Chinese president's visit opens new horizon for China-Bangladesh relations: lawmaker

DHAKA -- Chinese President Xi Jinping's visit has opened a new horizon to reimagine the further of China-Bangladesh relations, experts said at a seminar.

At the discussion on Saturday, they termed Xi's visit last month a "milestone" in the history of bilateral relationship, which has entered into a fast track and ushered a new era of pragmatic cooperation in every sector.

"The visit has presented us the encouraging status of the bilateral relationship and also opened the new horizon for us to reimagine the further of China and Bangladesh relationship," said lawmaker Saber Hossain Chowdhur from Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina's ruling Bangladesh Awami League (AL) party.

Chowdhury, also president of the Inter-Parliamentary Union (IPU) and chairman of Bangladesh China Foundation for Future, said over the past years there has been a remarkable development of economic relationship between the two countries.

China is Bangladesh's largest trading partner. There is now interest in increasing Chinese FDI and support from China for developing the infrastructure of Bangladesh.

During Xi's visit, the first by a Chinese president in past three decades, the two countries signed 28 MoUs and deals. Chowdhury, who is also a former state minister, said Bangladesh is an important destination for Chinese trade and investment under the Road and Belt initiative.

Bangladesh and China need to work jointly to strengthen people-to-people exchanges for deepening mutual understanding, actively expand exchanges and cooperation in the areas of culture, science and technology, media and health, and further promote interaction between media organizations, think tanks, academia, research community and scholars.

"We believe that to achieve a more comprehensive cooperation as mentioned above young of the two countries can contribute more in the future," he said.

Chowdhury believed it is high time to think about the active participation of the youth in the level of decision making and widening the trend of developing the skills to attain meaningful work for economic growth of Bangladesh and China.

On the sidelines of the meeting, Bangladesh China Foundation for Future arranged a dialogue among youth on Bangladesh-China relations, which marked the 41st anniversary of diplomatic ties between the two countries this year.

"In the past four decades Bangladesh and China relations have undergone speedy transformation," said Information and Communication Technology (ICT) State Minister Zunaid Ahmed Palak.

"Level of cooperation has accelerated since Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina-led Awami League government came into power in Bangladesh in 2009," he said.

Prime Minister Hasina declared her vision to build a digital Bangladesh, a nearly 200-million-U.S. dollar project.

"In this process, we started inter network among all government offices and all government officers. We have connected 18,000 government offices up to sub-district level with the support of Chinese government," Palak said.