Japan has been Bangladesh's most trusted friend. It has always treated Bangladesh as special since recognising the country in February 1972. Bangladesh was the largest recipient of Japanese ODA (official development assistance) for a long time. In the 1970s 80s and 90s, when its development partners were literally underwriting the country's development budget, Japan was Bangladesh's number one provider of development assistance. Japanese assistance was of the highest quality going to the country's economic and human infrastructure building. Although Japanese assistance has been both in aid and grant, most of the aid has been subsequently written off as grant.
Development assistance, however, is no longer as critical as before to Bangladesh's development efforts. Nevertheless, Japan's importance to Bangladesh has not diminished even a little bit. In fact, it has enhanced significantly because Japan can now literally lift Bangladesh the quickest towards its destination of becoming a middle-income country through trade and investment. The ground work for such cooperation was laid out during the successful visit of Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina to Japan in the end of May when Japan pledged US$ 5.96 billion over the next five years in assistance and proposed the formation Bay of Bengal Industrial Growth Belt (BBIG-B) to help Bangladesh realise its huge economic potential and expedite its growth.
Both were major overtures by Japan to become deeply involved in Bangladesh. Nevertheless, the decision of the Japanese Prime Minister to come to Dhaka so soon after Sheikh Hasina's visit emphasised a paradigm shift in its interests in Bangladesh. The offers/proposals that Japan made to the Bangladesh Prime Minister in Tokyo were expected to mature over time. In fact, a number of high-level visits from Tokyo to Dhaka were undertaken already to carry forward the discussions and decisions reached in Tokyo at the summit meeting. There was no need for Japan to pursue those decisions at another summit-level meeting. In diplomatic parlance, visits at summit level that take place in such quick succession hints at something unusual and extraordinary.
Therefore, the reason for Shinzo Abe's Dhaka visit was an urgent one and perhaps had little to do with the decisions reached between the two countries in Tokyo. Subsequent to her visit to Japan, Sheikh Hasina had visited China. A number of decisions were reached there on Bangladesh-China relations that must have worried Tokyo. One was the discussion on the Chinese offer to build the Sonadia deep seaport. The others were the decisions on enhancing military and economic cooperation. The offer on Sonadia and decisions of cooperation in economic/military areas underlined that Chinese involvement in Bangladesh is deepening and entering into strategic areas. In particular, the offer to build the Sonadia deep seaport where Chinese also have stated they would keep control had the potential to directly conflict with the Japanese offer of the Bay of Bengal Industrial Growth Belt.
Japan and China have historical enmity with a lot of it emanating from Japanese occupation of China during the Second World War. That enmity has now taken a new dangerous dimension over the issue of the islands in South China Sea. Japan's BBIG-M offer has been made keeping in view the strategic location of Bangladesh and its importance vis-à-vis China. Amitava Mukherjee has recently underlined that strategic value in an article Is Bangladesh the newest acquisition to China's pearl of strings? in the internet-based web paper geopoliticalmonitor.com. In the article, the writer highlighted Bangladesh "as a country which overlooks the strategically important sea lanes of the Indian Ocean linking China with the Persian Gulf and the Strait of Hormuz, thus playing a role in securing energy supplies for Beijing".
Therefore there are ample reasons to believe that the overtures by China to Bangladesh during Sheikh Hasina's China visit taken after her Japan visit have worried Tokyo and necessitated the visit of Shinzo Abe to Dhaka to woo Bangladesh from China.
Meanwhile, the new government in New Delhi is coming closer to Washington. Secretary of State John Kerry has already visited New Delhi and Narendra Modi would be visiting Washington later this month. The Indo-US strategic partnership that President Obama had announced in 2011 to stop Chinese influence in Southeast Asia and Pacific was sent to cold storage as US-India relations deteriorated under the Congress government over a host of issues where Bangladesh's elections of January 05 also played a role. Indo-US relation is now warming up again.
Japan, a traditional US partner, under Shinzo Abe's second term, has also targeted Southeast and South Asia as a new focus in foreign affairs where it sees China's influence the same way, as does the United States - perhaps even with more concern. Thus the US/India and Japan are getting closer in a strategic partnership that wants to contain China from expanding into South Asia and Southeast Asia vis-à-vis China. In the evolving strategic equations, Bangladesh's geopolitical location has become very important. Bangladesh may thus be moving into a position where USA/India/ Japan could be vying for Bangladesh's support to keep China from getting any foothold in the geopolitical location that is emerging as one of tremendous strategic value. In fact, US's massive investments in Myanmar, which is equally important in this emerging cold-war type of conflict, have been made with containing China in view.
One is not sure if the Bangladesh foreign policy strategists have considered its attempts to deal with Japan and China with these strategic issues in mind. It does not appear to be so. In fact, one could suspect that the Bangladesh Government has inadvertently walked into a situation that could turn for it into a hot potato where the way the issues would be resolved would depend not on it but on the international players. This would explain why Shinzo Abe visited Dhaka so soon after Hasina's Tokyo visit and also why he visited Sri Lanka together with his Dhaka visit where the Chinese are creating a foothold through helping that country with its deep seaports.
In fact, the media has openly stated that Shinzo Abe's Bangladesh and Sri Lanka visits were undertaken to offset China in South Asia. These views have connected Narendra Modi's visit to Tokyo before he visited Dhaka/Colombo to conclude a Japanese-Indian meeting of minds on China. Shinzo Abe did not cover any new issue in Dhaka in Bangladesh-Japan bilateral relations except those covered in Tokyo. He reiterated again the importance of the BBIG-B that only exposed further Japan's interest to use this proposal to offset the Chinese offer on Sonadia and thereby get a strategic stranglehold in the Bay of Bengal.
Shinzo Abe steered clear of Bangladesh's internal politics. He said nothing that was of use for the AL-led government to score points over the issue of legitimacy of the government. In fact, his meeting with Begum Zia and his emphasis on discussion among the parties suggested that Japan considers that Bangladesh is still in the midst of a political crisis that needed to be resolved. In all these, he, of course, did not fail to get from a government willing to do anything to please Japan a commitment on its candidature for a seat as a non-permanent member in the UN Security Council. The large business/investment delegation that accompanied the Japanese Prime Minister nevertheless indicates that Japan is looking at Bangladesh seriously as a major investment destination.
Shinzo Abe's visit was pursued in Japan's long-term strategic interests with Bangladesh with the immediate objective to stop China's influence in the country and South Asia growing. He has left the Bangladesh Government with the task of finding a way to deal with China with which it has wittingly or unwittingly gone deeper in economic/defence and strategic cooperation after Sheikh Hasina's visit - a task that will now get more difficult as USA and India are expected to join Japan in encouraging Bangladesh to disengage from China's strategic goals in the region.
The writer is a former
Ambassador to Japan.
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