• Beijing and Dhaka should “firmly support each other”.
• Yunus’ visit shows Bangladesh “Sends a message”.
• China insists on staying good partner to Dhaka: XI.

BEIJING: Chinese President Xi Jinping on Friday promised a deeper collaboration with Bangladeshi colleague Muhammad Yunus at a meeting that came when Dhaka is looking for new friends to equalize frosty ties with India.

Yunus took over Bangladesh in August last year after the overturn of autocratic ex-premieres Sheikh Hasina, who fled to New Delhi after a student-led uprising.

India was the largest charity of Hasina’s government, and her radiance sent cross-border connections to a tail spin that culminated with Yunus chose to make his first state visit to China India’s largest Asian rival.

XI told Yunus on Friday that Beijing was “willing to work with Bangladesh to push bilateral cooperation to a new level”, Chinese state view CCTV reported.

“China … insists on staying a good neighbor, good friend and good partner to Bangladesh, based on mutual confidence,” XI said, according to Chinese TV.

The Chinese leader allegedly said that Beijing and Dhaka should “firmly support each other” about core interests and support Bangladesh on issues, including the protection of national sovereignty, independence and territorial integrity.

He added that the two countries would explore cooperation in infrastructure construction, water protection and the digital, marine and environmental sectors.

Dhaka said this week that Yunus’s China visit showed that Bangladesh “sent a message”.

The 84-year-old Nobel Prize winner is expected to return home on Saturday after holding several other high-level meetings in the Chinese capital.

Several agreements are expected to be signed on financial and technical assistance, cultural and sports cooperation and medias collaboration between the two countries, according to the Bangladeshi administration.

Negotiations are also expected to touch Bangladesh’s huge population of Rohingya refugees, most of which fled from a violent military breakdown in neighboring Myanmar in 2017.

China has served as a broker between Bangladesh and Myanmar in the past to mediate the repatriation of the persecuted minority, even though the effort stopped because of Myanmar’s unwillingness to get them back.

India tension

Senior persons in the Indian and Bangladeshi governments have acted bargaining in front of Yunus’s stay to Beijing.

These tensions have almost fully stopped travels of Bangladeshis to India for medical tourism, of which thousands crossed the border each year to seek care in their larger neighbor.

Dhaka’s top bureaucrat at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs said this week that speeches in Beijing would touch the establishment of a Chinese “friendship hospital” in Bangladesh.

Yunus’s caretaker administration has the inevitable task of introducing democratic reforms before new elections expected in mid -2026.

So far, it has not requested that India allow Hasin’s extradition to face charges of crimes against humanity for murder of hundreds of protesters during the turmoil that overturned her government.

Yunus has also sought a meeting with Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi in an attempt to reset the connections, with both expected to be at the same regional summit in Bangkok next month.

His government has not yet received an answer in which Indian Foreign Minister S Jaisankar said the request was “under revision”.