The Chinese city of Guiyang, the capital of the southwest province of Guizhou, has launched a new air cargo service directly linking the metropolis of nearly 6 million people with the Bangladeshi capital of Dhaka.
Operated by Tianjin Air, the service will operate five flights a week with a stop in Yangon, the capital of Myanmar.
“The cargo coming into China is mainly aquatic products such as crabs and eels, while the outbound cargo is mainly clothing, cloth, flowers, electronic accessories, and mechanical accessories,” Guiyang Airport said on social media app Weibo.
This move follows China’s 2024 decision to grant tariff-free access to imports from Bangladesh and helps the latter country’s seafood sector carry out plans to reduce its reliance on Western export markets. For example, nearly 60 percent of the country’s shrimp exports go to the E.U. alone.
Bangladesh has been attempting to pull back from Western markets for several reasons, one of which is that markets like the U.S. and Europe have featured lower consumer spending in the face of high inflation recently. Additionally, nations like the U.S. have been implementing tariffs that aim to boost the profile of domestic products, rather than imports.
“Recently, a protectionist trend has emerged in global trade,” the Bangladesh Seafood Network said in an October 2024 article. “The duty-free access to China is expected to boost overall exports and expand market diversification for Bangladeshi shrimp. The tariffs imposed on imports of seafood, both currently and in recent times, by major importers like the U.S. and the E.U. make Bangladeshi exports less price competitive.”
The tariff-free access and the new cargo route should also help the two countries chip away at their uneven trade ratio.
Economists released a research paper last year highlighting that Bangladeshi exports to China are “far behind imports from the latter, resulting in a trade deficit ratio of about 1:20.”
“Bangladeshi firms have found it challenging to increase their market share in the Chinese market,” the paper said. ” In contrast, Chinese products have gained a large following in Bangladesh since China gained World Trade Organization membership in the early 2000s. Chinese imports have grown even further since its Belt and Road Initiative was announced in 2013.”
