Hmm do you think that the Chinese government makes such major decisions without any kind of thought or planning?
The bottom line is that Myanmar is more important in strategic terms, they can provide us access to warm waters via land connection just like Pakistan can.
Whereas Bangladesh is not only surrounded by India on all sides, but India controls Bangladesh through the Hasina government. There is no land connection between China and Bangladesh, unless you want to go through India.
Not to mention that Bangladesh sold us out over the Sonadia port, on India's orders.
Let's take a chill pill brother.
First - please don't compare us to Indians or call us Indian lackeys. That is the highest form of insult for us.
Just because Bangladesh (Mèngjiālā Guo) is surrounded by India, does not mean they control our politics and diplomacy (don't listen to Indian trolls who will try to tell you otherwise). Diplomacy is balance and pursuing national interest, as you said. Hasina has played India well. The armed forces however - is very pro-Chinese. Most of the equipment and armament comes from China.
For our diplomatic situation - sometimes India's whims cannot be ignored. They are a very strong neighbor. However Indian Govts. actions are not always the final word.
China's influence must be activated on the ground in Bangladesh by concrete diplomatic action. Like someone (
@UKBengali ?) said - Bangladesh has never back-stabbed China like Vietnam or other smaller nations did, nor do I see this happening in the future. We are a mature nation with a long tradition of political maturity. We have seen the value of great diplomatic overtures with China historically, we see no reason to change this in the future. In this respect, we are similar to where Sri Lanka is with China.
India is not investing in our country in rapid fashion, China is. Bangladesh' economic future is intertwined with China, not India. Indian govt. knows this very well.
In Bangladesh - public support for China and public hate for India are both at all time highs. You can come to Bangladesh to see this at ground level. Lately relations have soured with India even further (Indian FM met with local opposition party against diplomatic norms while on her visit here).
If the support, commitment and overtures shown by China CCP are not seen locally as strong enough (because maybe Bangladesh is not
perceived to be important enough strategically to Chinese Govt. at least right now), then Bangladesh will have to heed India's opinion somewhat, especially for India's strategic defense concerns. This was more true in the past than right now (4th QTR 2017).
We have always expected the backing of your country to counter India. I am sorry to say this has not been consistently received.
Other than diplomacy - there is a lot happening with China economically. There is massive industrial investment happening, both by local industrialists/business-people in JV with Chinese companies for machinery/technology, as well as Chinese companies setting up shop in our export processing zones to export items to Europe and US - utilizing lower cost labor. Even our Naval yards have ongoing JV with
WuChang shipbuilding to manufacture OPV and frigate.
I am confident we are more important to China industrial activity-wise than, say - Myanmar. This will become more valuable in terms of value addition in the very near future. I don't see this slowing down anytime soon.
As Thailand became low-cost economic partner of Japan ten/fifteen years ago, Bangladesh is already becoming low-cost partner like this to China. Thailand's (even Indonesia or Vietnam's) labor cost is way higher than Bangladesh. There is no alternative to manufacture low value-added items cheaply in places other than Bangladesh .
No amount of Indian influence will be able to stop this economic cooperation with China.
So - I think Bangladesh as a mature economy is already as important to China as Mynamar is. However I see this going much higher in trajectory for many reasons. Myanmar economy is not as mature as Bangladesh' economy - I'd say about ten or more years behind.
I hate to point fingers, but if China wanted something at Sonadia, then why did China not act strongly and lobby diplomatically with our prime minister? Sonadia port by China always had strong support in our armed forces, however it is local opinion that China did not politically commit strongly enough at that time.
I would say that this was not a correct move at that time by China.