After meeting last week with the leader of Bangladesh's interim government, Muhammad Yunus, Chinese President Xi Jinping said Beijing is "willing to work with Bangladesh to push bilateral cooperation to a new level."

Yunus, an economist and Nobel laureate, became the chief adviser to Bangladesh's interim government after former leader Sheikh Hasina was forced to step down amid a popular student-led uprising in August 2024.

Yunus' press secretary Shafiqul Alam quickly labelled the chief adviser's first foreign tour as a "grand success."

Yunus came home from China having secured $2.1 billion (€1.94 billion) in Chinese investments, loans and grants, his office said.

A major part of this is establishing a Chinese Industrial Economic Zone (CIEZ) in Bangladesh, with nearly 30 Chinese companies having pledged $1 billion for the project, coming after Yunus urged more private Chinese investment in Bangladesh's manufacturing sector.

China also plans to lend $400 million to modernize Bangladesh's second-largest port at Mongla. Beijing is considering enhanced cooperation in water resource management. And China again pledged to support Bangladesh in its effort to repatriate over a million Rohingya refugees currently living in crowded refugee camps after fleeing persecution in neighboring Myanmar.

Former diplomat Munshi Faiz Ahmad said Yunus's meeting with Xi was a positive sign for the interim government.

"Some countries hesitate to commit large-scale corporations with an interim government. But China didn't hesitate to deal with Muhammad Yunus. It resumed the

© Deutsche Welle