China Deepens Political Engagement As Bangladesh Preps For 2026 Elections
China's enhanced role in Bangladesh's domestic politics continues with its latest round of meetings with political parties in the country. Since April this year, China has emerged as a leading player in Bangladesh engaging with all major political parties.
Chinese Vice Minister of Foreign Affairs Sun Weidong met a visiting Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) delegation on Tuesday. After the meeting, he said he hoped for a free and fair election in Bangladesh, adding that China conveyed its willingness to work with the country's future government.
The Bangladesh nationalist Party or BNP was the main opposition party in Bangladesh during former Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina's administration. It was the BNP which had boycotted the 2024 national elections claiming they were "rigged and unfair".
But Beijing has gone beyond just the leading opposition party. It has also been meeting other political forces within Bangladesh.
In April this year, a senior Chinese Communist Party delegation led by Peng Jiubin of the Southeast and South Asian Affairs Bureau of the International Department of the CCP met a delegation of the Jamaat-e-Islami Bangladesh, considered pro-Pakistan. With them too, the upcoming elections were discussed.
Earlier this month, The Chinese Ambassador to Bangladesh Yao Wen met a delegation of the recently formed National Citizens Party, at the Chinese Embassy in Dhaka and the upcoming elections were discussed in detail.
The National Citizens Party or NCP is an offshoot of the students' uprising last year that led to the ouster of the Sheikh Hasina government in August 2024. The NCP Convenor Nahid Islam was a part of the interim government led by Professor Muhammad Yunus earlier.
These meetings, which have been billed as regular interactions, show China's involvement and outreach with political parties that are likely to emerge as major stakeholders in the upcoming elections.
These meetings come in the wake of Bangladesh's Chief Adviser Muhammad Yunus's visit to China where he made a clear pitch for Beijing to engage with Dhaka.
Mr Yunus, during his four-day visit to Beijing in March this year, asked Beijing to make an "extension", saying that northeast India's "seven sister states are landlocked" by Bangladesh and Myanmar.
Yunus urged the Chinese government to "extend" in the region by establishing a base in Bangladesh which was seen as a call to indirectly cut-off India's northeastern states.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi had reacted sharply to Muhammad Yunus's remarks saying, "...any rhetoric that vitiates the environment is best avoided," when the two leaders met on the sidelines of the BIMSTEC Summit in Bangkok.
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