On International Children's Day in 2023, Alifa Chin received a letter from China's President Xi Jinping. "I wish you every success at school. Live your dreams," Xi wrote to the now 14-year-old who lives in the Bangladeshi port city of Chittagong. "If you want, you can study medicine in China later to help other people," he added.

Chin was born on a Chinese navy ship in 2010. It was a difficult birth. Her mother had a heart condition and she had to be transferred from the maternity clinic to the Chinese hospital ship, which was making a regular stop off Bangladesh at the time.

Doctors on the vessel performed an emergency operation, and both mother and baby were fine.

Her father was so thrilled that he named his child "Chin," the Bengali word for China.

And the girl later called the midwife "the Chinese mom."

Xi's charm offensive aimed to bring the people of China and Bangladesh closer together. "China and Bangladesh have always been good neighbors and good partners," wrote Xi in his letter to Chin.

Bangladesh is of strategic importance to China. Its location in the eastern part of the Indian Ocean means it is ideally situated for the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), Xi's signature project aimed at boosting China's economic and political influence by implementing a raft of infrastructure projects and trade networks worldwide.

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Bangladesh, with its 172 million people, offers a huge market in the region for China's export-oriented economy.

However, Beijing also sees competitive disadvantages.

Bangladesh shares a land border with only two countries: Myanmar — which is plagued by civil war and from where hundreds of thousands of the long-persecuted Rohingya Muslim minority have fled to Bangladesh — and the South Asian giant India, with which Bangladesh shares a 4,096-kilometer border.

China took a clear line in its........

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