China has moved on, India is still adapting in Bangladesh

Sheikh Hasina’s last foreign trip before her government collapsed was to Beijing. Less than two years later, Bangladesh’s newly elected prime minister, Tarique Rahman, made his first overseas journey to the same country after a brief stop in Malaysia. The coincidence is striking, but it should not be mistaken for continuity. Between the two visits lie a transformed Bangladesh, a Chinese leadership that adjusted quickly, and an Indian establishment still learning how to deal with a neighbour it can no longer read through the politics of one party.

That transformation is unfolding at a time when Bangladesh’s neighbourhood is no longer only regional. Sitting on the Bay of Bengal and connecting South and Southeast Asia, Bangladesh has become more important than its size might suggest. For Washington, it matters to maritime security and the Indo-Pacific. For Beijing, it offers trade routes, infrastructure, influence, and a market of 170 million people. For Delhi, it is tied to neighbourhood security, regional leadership, and the management of China’s presence near its borders. For Bangladesh, the question is not which camp to join, but how to protect its own interests without becoming a pawn in someone else’s contest.

Bangladesh has already faced that pressure. Until the July uprising, both India and China were close to the Awami League government, though in different ways. India remained deeply invested in Sheikh Hasina’s rule through four consecutive elections since 2009, even as those polls were increasingly criticised for shrinking competition, weakening democratic accountability, and consolidating an authoritarian style of governance. It extended billions of dollars in credit and treated the widely criticised January 2024 election as Bangladesh’s internal matter, even as Washington imposed visa restrictions over concerns about its fairness.

China’s relationship with the Awami League government also ran deep. Bangladesh joined the Belt and Road Initiative in 2016, the same year Xi Jinping’s visit to Dhaka upgraded ties to a strategic partnership. China became Bangladesh’s largest trading partner and a leading arms supplier. After the boycotted January 2024 election, Beijing congratulated the Awami League and conveyed the good wishes of Chinese leaders. This was not distant neutrality but recognition of the government of the day. It would therefore be misleading to suggest that only India was close to the previous regime. Both were close, though in different ways.

The difference became visible after the Awami League fell in the July uprising. China adjusted quickly. It showed little attachment to the old order and moved toward the new political reality through the language of continuity, development, and opportunity. Beijing engaged the interim government and later the newly elected government without turning Bangladesh’s internal transition into the centre of its public diplomacy.

India’s adjustment has been more uneven. At the top, Narendra Modi moved quickly, sending a personal letter within hours of Tarique Rahman’s swearing-in and inviting him to visit. But the follow-through has been slower. Sheikh Hasina has lived in India since fleeing Dhaka, while Bangladesh’s extradition request, filed after a tribunal sentenced her to death in absentia, remains under examination by New Delhi. In eighteen months, S Jaishankar visited Bangladesh only once, for Khaleda Zia’s funeral, and a new Indian high commissioner presented his credentials only in late June, the same day a two-year visa suspension was finally lifted.

This uneven diplomacy has unfolded against a more damaging media and political climate. After the uprising, Bangladeshi fact-checkers and international outlets documented fabricated and misleading claims across parts of India’s television and social media ecosystem, including unrelated images presented as attacks on Hindus in Bangladesh. Genuine incidents did occur, and some anti-India rhetoric in Bangladesh also reflected frustration over Delhi’s earlier support for the Awami League. But the scale and pattern of misinformation in India’s media made it harder to rebuild trust in a new political context. The problem has not disappeared. Coverage of Tarique Rahman’s China visit still shows sections of the Indian press, along with some politicians and analysts, portraying Bangladesh-China engagement as a conspiracy against India rather than a sovereign choice by Dhaka.

The same suspicion that India’s domestic politics reinforces the same suspicion. Bangladesh is frequently used as a symbol of illegal migration, insecurity, and religious anxiety, while Bengali-speaking Muslims are often branded as Bangladeshis in election rhetoric. The recent West Bengal state election made this explicit, with BJP leaders warning that the state risked turning into a Greater Bangladesh and linking Bangladeshi infiltrators to communal unrest in Murshidabad and Malda, months before the party swept to power there for the first time. Reports of people being pushed toward Bangladesh without proper verification or due process have deepened mistrust.

China carries none of this baggage. It has no shared border with Bangladesh, no domestic political constituency shaped by migration anxiety, and none of the historical burden that Delhi and Dhaka have carried since 1971. That allows Beijing to remain transactional in its engagement. Yet Bangladesh should not romanticise this consistency. Chinese financing can build infrastructure and capacity, but it can also create dependency if not managed carefully.

India’s relationship with Bangladesh is fundamentally different because it is not optional for either side. Geography ensures constant interaction, but the dependence is structural and two-sided. Bangladesh depends on India for trade routes, energy connectivity, and border stability. India, in turn, depends on Bangladesh in ways often understated in its domestic debate. Bangladesh is a growing market for Indian exports, a key transit route for connectivity to the Northeast, an essential partner in managing a long and sensitive border, and a crucial factor in Bay of Bengal connectivity, where India’s economic ambitions depend on stability in its east. This makes the relationship unavoidable and economically interlinked, but also fragile when political trust weakens.

But precisely because of this depth, the relationship cannot be rebuilt through old assumptions. India needs to recognise that post-uprising Bangladesh is more politically sensitive and publicly more assertive. If New Delhi wants to restore confidence, it must engage not only governments but also society and institutions, reduce hostile rhetoric, ensure due process in border and migration issues, move forward on water sharing, and avoid interpreting Bangladesh’s engagement with China as alignment against India.

Bangladesh cannot afford uncertainty while trying to maintain balance. It must continue to welcome Chinese investment with scrutiny, rebuild ties with India without compromising dignity, and keep open engagement with the United States and other Western partners whose markets remain central to its economy.

The real difference between Beijing and Delhi since the fall of the Awami League was never about friendship. Both were close to the government that collapsed, each in its own way. The difference lies in adaptability. China adjusted quickly because its engagement is transactional and interest-driven. India has moved more slowly, constrained by past political comfort, domestic sensitivities, and a media environment that often reopens old tensions. If India seeks a genuine partnership with Bangladesh on the Bay of Bengal rather than a cautious neighbour watching Beijing, it must engage the Bangladesh that exists today, not the one it grew used to.

Roman Uddin is a senior research associate at the Centre for Governance Studies.