Bangladesh: After visiting India, PM Hasina Wazed signs 21 agreements with China
Virendra Pandit
New Delhi: Days after visiting India, Bangladesh Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina Wazed met President Xi Jinping and her Chinese counterpart Li Qiang in Beijing on Wednesday as the two countries signed 21 agreements, and MoUs, and announced seven more projects to further elevate their strategic cooperative ties, the media reported.
During their meetings, the two countries agreed to elevate their “strategic partnership” to a “comprehensive strategic cooperative partnership,” Bangladesh’s state-run news agency “Bangladesh Sangbad Sangstha (BSS) reported.
China will help Bangladesh economically in four ways by giving grants, interest-free loans, concessional loans, and commercial loans, the Chinese President said during the bilateral meeting with PM Hasina.
She reached China on Tuesday on a four-day visit for talks with Chinese top leadership, including President Xi Jinping and Premier Li Qiang, and further cement the bilateral strategic ties.
In her separate meetings with Xi and Li on Wednesday, the entire gamut of bilateral relations alongside the regional and international matters came up for discussion.
PM Hasina’s visit to China is taking place within 15 days after her India visit on June 21 and 22. She had last met with President Xi recently on the sidelines of the 15th BRICS Summit in Johannesburg, South Africa.
The two countries would celebrate the golden jubilee of their diplomatic relations next year.
China’s top political advisor Wang Huning met with PM Hasina on Tuesday.
Wang, chairman of the National Committee of the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC), said that under the strategic guidance of the two countries’ leaders, China and Bangladesh have respected and treated each other with equality, setting a good example of friendly coexistence and mutually beneficial cooperation between countries.
China is ready to deepen practical cooperation with Bangladesh in various fields and push the strategic cooperative partnership between the two countries to a new height, to better benefit the two peoples, Wang was quoted as saying by the official Xinhua news agency.
