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China repeating history in Bangladesh
M Serajul Islam | Published: 00:00, Jun 22,2023
(An outdoor screen shows a live news coverage of China’s president Xi Jinping delivering a speech during the closing session of the National People’s Congress at the Great Hall of the People, along a street in Beijing on March 13. — Agence France-Presse/Jade Gao
CHINA has been in the news recently following remarks of Wang Wenbin, the Chinese spokesman at its foreign affairs ministry. The spokesman’s remarks were in response to a journalist who wanted to know about China’s stand on Sheikh Hasina’s instruction to her planning ministry to stop buying anything from countries that imposed sanctions.
The AL supporters interpreted Wang’s remarks as China’s support for the AL-led regime against the US effort to force it to hold the country’s next general election in a free, fair and peaceful manner that it is afraid it would lose. This may appear prima facae a likely assessment to gladden the AL supporters. However, on a more serious examination, the AL-led regime may have more reasons to worry about the Chinese support than to be excited over it.
China itself is under serious US sanctions for a wide array of reasons. China rejected the US proposal for direct contact between the military of their two countries raised during US secretary of state Antony Blinken’s recent visit to Beijing on the issue of sanctions. The Chinese defence minister Li Shangfu has been under US sanction since 2018 for buying prohibited combat aircraft and equipment from Russia’s main arms exporter Rosoboronexport.
Further, US-China relations have been plagued permanently by Washington’s accusations against China of massive violations of human rights. The United States also does not accept China as a democratic country. While secretary Blinken was in Beijing negotiating ways to improve US-China relations, president Joe Biden nonchalantly referred to the Chinese president Xi Jinping as a dictator. China rejects the accusations of the United States against it on issues of democracy and human rights.
China, therefore, used recent pressures of the United States on Bangladesh on democracy and human rights that led to Sheikh Hasina’s instruction to her planning ministry to take a serious dig at Washington. Wang Wenbin in his statement, thus ,said: ‘We have noted the recent remarks by Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina. Indeed, while turning a blind eye to its own racial discrimination, gun violence, and drug proliferation problems, a certain country has long been interfering in the internal affairs of Bangladesh and many other developing countries under the pretext of democracy and human rights. Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina spoke not just [about] the strong position of the Bangladeshi people, but also the mind of a large part of the international community, especially the developing world.’
China was the first country that backed the AL-led regime after it had come to power through the controversial 2014 election. It also welcomed the Awami League after it had won the 2018 controversial election. China gained the most by assisting the Awami League in these two controversial elections although other countries, namely India, the United States and western nations, took the blame. Ironically, China gained because the US/west and India, the champions of democracy, were busy dispensing with democracy and human rights to keep the Bangladesh Nationalist Party out of power on the pretext of Islamic fundamentalism and Islamic terrorism.
China carved for itself a dominant strategic position while India, the United States and the west paved for it the way. China has either assisted or is assisting most of Bangladesh’s mega-economic projects. Bangladesh may be more deeply into the so-called ‘China debt trap’ than Sri Lanka although no serious economic analysis has yet been made on the subject. More importantly, China, unlike India, kept itself clear of Bangladesh’s polarised politics.
China may not be able to keep itself out of Bangladesh’s polarised politics, which has worsened meanwhile, much longer. By taking the side of the AL-led regime to serve its greater global agenda, it made itself controversial to a section of the people of Bangladesh larger than that the Awami League represents. Democracy, human rights and the right to a free and fair election have a sense of urgency in Bangladesh today.
These issues are not merely political for people of Bangladesh any more. These are the antidote to the existential threat that the country is facing now. The support of the United States, the west and the United Nations for these rights has come at a very appropriate time for those fighting for their right to vote, democracy and human rights. Their pursuit of fighting ‘Islamic fundamentalism’ and ‘Islamic terrorism’ which was the main reason for them to keep the Awami League in power in the past has disappeared from their radar. These powers are now pursuing democracy and human rights globally and in Bangladesh.
This change in the global agenda of the United States, the west and the United Nations has become the game changer in Bangladesh’s politics.
China is in denial of these changes. China is also in denial that president Joe Biden will use these issues as his strategy to win his re-election and lead the Democratic Party to retain the senate and regain the house in the 2024 presidential elections. China’s effort to use Bangladesh and the predicament of the AL-led regime to score points against the United States globally, therefore, may have a counter-effect for the AL-led regime.
The Awami League is undoubtedly in a crisis. The Biden-Modi meeting at the White House scheduled for June 23 has been used by the AL regime’s apologists on the Indian media and, in particular, on the Kolkata media to suggest that the Indian prime minister may turn the tide for the Awami League. There is little chance of this because Washington has already cast its die on the Bangladesh election that these columnists in Delhi and Kolkata do not appear to have examined seriously.
The United States and India have a wide range of extremely important issues of global and regional importance that will figure in the Biden-Modi talks. There is no reason Bangladesh would, as the Kolkata- and Delhi-based columnists suggested, figure out the way they have suggested in the talks. New Delhi has a great deal to answer to the Biden administration on South Asia. In the wake of 9/11, the United States had granted India the task to look after its interests in South Asia which India failed to fulfil. India picked up quarrels with all South Asian nations that paved the way for Chinese dominance in the region.
China has unwittingly weakened even the feeble chance for Narendra Modi to assist the Awami League during his talks with president Biden by its decision to take up Bangladesh’s case against the United States right before the talks. New Delhi had so long one window to plead for the Awami League with the United States that, otherwise, Bangladesh would move to the Chinese sphere irretrievably. Wang Wenbin’s recent statement of China’s support for Bangladesh and the AL-led regime has closed that window.
Instead, China’s decision to back Bangladesh and by that count, the AL regime, against the United States on issues of democracy, human rights and free and fair elections reopened discussion in Bangladesh on its role in 1971. China supported Pakistan’s military in 1971 and held up Bangladesh’s membership in the United Nations till September 1974.
Postscript: The Hindustan Times carried a report on June 21 that stated that 75 US senators and congressional representatives belonging to the Democratic Party sent a letter to president Biden expressing serious concern about India’s human rights record hours before the Modi-Biden talks.
China repeating history in Bangladesh
CHINA has been in the news recently following remarks of Wang Wenbin, the Chinese spokesman at its foreign affairs ministry. The spokesman’s remarks were in response to a journalist who wanted to know about China’s stand...
www.newagebd.net
