Bangladesh lets China envoy go close to Chicken’s Neck

DHAKA: In the midst of strained relations betwixt New Delhi and Dhaka, the Chinese ambassador to Bangladesh connected Monday visited a Teesta task country adjacent to the strategical Siliguri corridor oregon Chicken’s Neck — a 22-km constrictive onshore portion — betwixt India’s mainland and its Northeastern states.Chinese envoy Yao Wen’s sojourn was related to an method appraisal being carried retired nether the Teesta River Comprehensive Management and Restoration Project, said the interim govt headed by Muhammad Yunus whose past twelvemonth arguable transportation for “extension of the Chinese economy” and India’s “landlocked” Northeast remarks echoed successful the Dec anti-India protests that targeted Indian diplomatic facilities successful Dhaka and different Bangladeshi cities.Water resources advisor Syeda Rizwana Hasan, who accompanied Yao to the task country successful Rangpur’s Tepamadhupur Taluk Shahbazpur, said China is keen to commencement implementation of Teesta Master Plan (TMP) arsenic soon arsenic possible. She said some Bangladesh and China are committed to implementing TMP. However, arsenic the scrutiny process of task is not yet complete, it is not imaginable to commencement enactment astatine this time, Hasan said.While for Bangladesh, Teesta is simply a lifeline for agriculture and livelihoods successful its bluish districts, for India — West Bengal — its arsenic critical.

Hence, a Teesta water-sharing strategy has stretched implicit decades and a last statement has remained elusive owed to concerns from West Bengal govt.Following a gathering betwixt Yao and nationalist information advisor Khalilur Rahman Sunday, main advisor Yunus’s property helping posted connected X, “Both sides exchanged views connected issues of communal interest, reaffirming longstanding relationship and improvement practice betwixt Bangladesh and China.”“Discussions included Teesta River Comprehensive Management and Restoration Project and projected Bangladesh–China Friendship Hospital. In this context, Chinese ambassador informed that helium would sojourn Teesta task area, and reiterated China’s committedness to completing the ongoing method appraisal expeditiously,” it said.The ambassador besides reaffirmed his govt’s continued enactment for Bangladesh’s ongoing antiauthoritarian modulation and conveyed champion wishes for the palmy behaviour of the forthcoming nationalist elections, the property helping said.Yunus, who was appointed main advisor successful 2024, during an interrogation successful China successful 2025 had urged Beijing to found beardown economical infrastructure successful Bangladesh by leveraging its strategical presumption arsenic “only guardian of the ocean” successful the region.