Understanding Bangladesh-China relations: Bangladesh’s rising geopolitical agency and China’s regional and global ambitions

Abstract

ABSTRACT Bangladesh-China relations has been a matter of much scrutiny since China emerged as Bangladesh’s biggest trading partner in 2006. Most of the research surrounding bilateral relations provided political, economic, and strategic explanations for a rising bonhomie between the two countries. Often, these studies failed to expand the nature of the relationship from regional and global perspectives. This research plans to address these lacunae in the research in understanding the patterns of the contemporary relationship between Bangladesh and China by taking bilateral, regional, and global perspectives into account that reinforce the patterns of the relationship. In other words, this research aims to look into Bangladesh-China relations analyzing the roles of individual and domestic factors, regional politics, and global perspectives. The article, by highlighting China’s involvement in Bangladesh on multiple levels, shall argue that without paying attention to and identifying the interplay among the three levels of analysis, the contours of Bangladesh-China relations cannot be fully explored.