July 12, 2020: After Nepal and Sri Lanka, China is quietly trying to win over yet another neighbour of India — Bangladesh.
The communist country on July 1 extended the zero-tariff policy benefit to 97% of its imports from Bangladesh, allowing the South Asian nation to export an additional 5,161 items to China without paying any customs duty, a gesture that has warmed the hearts of Bangladeshi government.
Bangladesh, a Least Developed Country (LDC), was earlier exporting 3,095 commodities to China duty-free. Though China implemented the zero-duty policy for 97% of tariff-lines in case of imports from some other LDCs as early as in 2015, the facility was not extended to Bangladesh till July 1.
China’s move has come when Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina’s government in Dhaka is struggling to revive the economy battered by the Covid-19 crisis.
Beijing is also understood to be in discussion with Dhaka for granting loans to the tune of $ 6.4 billion for several infrastructure projects across Bangladesh.
China’s move has been widely welcome in Bangladesh. It is being considered as “a major diplomatic victory” in the bilateral relations between Bangladesh and China, Joyeeta Bhattacharya, a senior fellow at the Observer Research Foundation (ORF), noted.
New Delhi has taken note of China’s move. Beijing also stepped up its bid to spread its geo-political influence around India, providing Covid-19 aid to Maldives and Sri Lanka and offering the Indian Ocean nations new loans to deal with the crisis, even as they are finding it difficult to come out of the debt trap, China has put them in with its belt and road initiative.
Source: Deccan Herald
