Signing of comprehensive bilateral FTA with China underscored | Bangladesh Sangbad Sangstha (BSS) bssnews.net - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from bssnews.net Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
Though China and Bangladesh shared an adversarial relationship during the latter’s independence movement and immediately after that, the relationship has undergone a tremendous transformation to the extent that China is now considered by many in Bangladesh as an ‘all-weather friend’. They established diplomatic ties in 1976; it was defence ties that was an important area of their relationship, which led to further expansion of ties.
Bilateral trade between China and Bangladesh is heavily tilted towards China. The trade deficit between them stood at US $16.27 billion in 2019, which has increased 16-fold in the last two decades. China forms the largest share in Bangladesh’s imports at 31.1 percent in 2019, more than double the imports from the next largest partner. Imports from China include a variety of items from textiles, machines, refined petroleum while exports to China consist mainly of textiles which form 70 percent of the total share.