Cementing Dhaka-Beijing ties further

Foreign adviser Mr Touhid Hossain's ongoing four-day visit to China, the first-ever bilateral meeting between the incumbent interim government and that country, bears special significance for Bangladesh. This is more so because the meeting is taking place on the eve of the 50th anniversary of the diplomatic relations between the two strategically located Asian neighbours. The issues to feature prominently at the Beijing discussion between the two top diplomats of the two countries are obviously the economic ones given that China is Bangladesh's biggest trading partner and the existing volume of trade is worth US$25 billion. Also, as a major development partner of Bangladesh, the post-August 5 government in Dhaka will be keen on having Beijing's enhanced support in that regard as well as further expansion of the opportunities at all levels of cooperation between the two countries. The issues like lowering interest rates and accelerating disbursement of various Chinese project loans to Bangladesh, waiver of commitment fees against the loans, seeking budgetary support and allowing duty-free access of more Bangladeshi products to China, especially during our post-graduation phase and so on will definitely occupy prominent place in the meeting. Apart from that, as most of its rivers originate outside the country and flows through a third country before entering Bangladesh, its extreme vulnerability in the ecological sense of the term need not be over-stressed. Which is why issues of water resources cooperation and exchange of hydrological information to that effect with Beijing have been included as important discussion points in the talks.
Needless to say, water-related issues have become life-and-death ones for Bangladesh, particularly when many water control structures like dams have already been built and more are in the process of construction upstream in the neighbouring India as well as China. Notably, some 54 officially recognised, unofficially one hundred or more, trans-boundary rivers originating in India flow through Bangladesh and water control structures have been built across the Indian parts of most of those rivers.
In this connection, the world's largest dam being built across the river Brahmaputra, also called Yarlung Zangbo in Tibet, by China near the Arunachal border of India to generate electricity will obviously come under review at the talks as Bangladesh is eager to know how the dam is going to impact the flow of Brahmaputra, the largest external water source of the country, and its ecology, in Bangladesh. What is of especial concern is the fact that India is also learnt to have taken up a project to build another dam within its border across Brahmaputra to mitigate the adverse impacts, if any, of the China dam project. If any of them withdraws water from the river unilaterally, it will spell disaster for Bangladesh part of the river, since going by statistics, at least 60 per cent of the population here relies for their survival on the water of the Brahmaputra-catchment basin. Against this backdrop, it is vital for either country to strengthen cooperation and keep one another posted on the emerging issues relating to the trans-boundary rivers at a time when climate change is rendering them unpredictable and, often, more destructive.
The stalled Teesta project of which China, reportedly, completed the primary feasibility report two years ago should come up for discussion. This is because the Teesta, with its flow markedly shrunk by dams built upstream in its Indian part, supplies the lifeline for the agrarian community of northern districts of Bangladesh. China may respond to the subject positively, if the Teesta project issue is broached afresh at the talks, a reported communication of this paper with the Chinese envoy in Dhaka indicates. Hopefully, the ongoing bilateral talks will help further widen existing economic ties as well as create more avenues of partnership between Dhaka and Beijing in the future.