By Shannon Tiezzi
Bangladesh’s Chief of Army Staff Abu Belal Muhammad Shafiul Huq visited Beijing on Thursday.
Bangladesh’s Chief of Army Staff Abu Belal Muhammad Shafiul Huq was in Beijing on Thursday, where he met with Chinese Defense Minister Chang Wanquan and Wang Jianping, deputy chief of general staff of the People’s Liberation Army. Both sides praised the development of China-Bangladesh military relations since the two countries established ties 40 years ago, and pledged deeper cooperation in the future.
The two countries have built up a solid military relationship, thanks largely to the fact that China is Bangladesh’s largest supplier of military equipment. Since 2010, Beijing has supplied Dhaka with five maritime patrol vessels, two corvettes, 44 tanks, and 16 fighter jets, as well as surface-to-air and anti-ship missiles, according to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute. That’s in addition to new Ming-class submarines Bangladesh ordered from China in 2013, which are expected to enter the Bangladeshi fleet in 2016, according to Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina.
China and Bangladesh have been moving to expand their cooperation besides hardware exchanges. In particular, there’s a robust relationship for training and military exchanges. China’s PLA sends nearly as many delegations to Bangladesh each year as India does, Srikanth Kondapalli of Jawaharlal Nehru University told Reuters earlier this year. Last year, when a high-ranking Chinese military official visited Dhaka, the two sides signed agreements that would see China provide training for Bangladeshi military personnel.
During Belal’s visit to China, Wang expressed his hope that “the two militaries can keep enhancing high-level exchange of visits, communication between military academies and cooperation in technologies and personnel training,” according to a paraphrasing byChina Military Online. Belal, meanwhile, said that Bangladesh is interested in increasing its cooperation with China on personnel training and peacekeeping. Bangladesh and China are two of the world’s top contributors of troops to UN peacekeeping missions; Bangladesh ranks second, with China in sixth.
Read the full story at The Diplomat