Dhaka-Beijing ties gain momentum

Dhaka and Beijing will host “a series of high-level visits” this year showing “concerted effort” and “good momentum” in bilateral relations, Chinese ambassador Li Jun has said.

Senior Correspondentbdnews24.com
Published : 23 April 2014, 02:13 PM
Updated : 23 April 2014, 02:19 PM

He said on Wednesday that President M Abdul Hamid was scheduled to go to Shanghai in the end of May to attend the Asia Confidence Building Summit, and Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina and political party leaders had been invited to visit China at “a mutually convenient time”.

The ambassador said the Vice Chairperson of China’s National Congress and Vice Chairperson of China’s National Military Commission would “successively come to Bangladesh early next month”.

He said the Vice Minister of China’s Ministry of Water Resources would visit Bangladesh later this year “for renewing the agreement on hydrological data and information exchange between the two governments”.

Ambassador Li was delivering a lecture on China’s development and its relations with Bangladesh at the Bangladesh Institute of International and Strategic Studies (BIISS) on Wednesday.

He said China welcomed “a prosperous, stable and united” Bangladesh and would continue to take “an active part” in Bangladesh’s social and economic development.

He highlighted the current China-Bangladesh relations and said they were growing faster than ever.

People-to-people exchanges had crossed 70,000 last year and the two-way trade soared to over $ 10 billion, he said.

The annual application for Chinese government scholarship was also being received.

With new reform measures getting under way, China was looking at investing an additional $ 500 billion in other countries, import goods over $ 10 trillion, and send 400 million tourists abroad over the next five years.

The ambassador said China’s current reforms would create “new and greater opportunities” for China’s relations with the external world.

As a neighbour, he reiterated that “Bangladesh should have a good share of it”.

He said development visions of both sides were “inspiring to each other and giving tremendous impetus to the bilateral co-operation”.

BIISS organised the lecture as part of its series of country-specific talks, an event chaired by its Chairman Munshi Faiz Ahmad.

Its Director General Maj Gen SM Shafiuddin Ahmed was also present.