In a 2024 essay The Dragon Amid the Tigers the novelist Amitav Ghosh lamented the hardening of mental barriers, especially in India and the United States, preventing people from learning much about China.
Reflecting on gaps in his own knowledge after travelling there, he suggested this was not due to a lack of curiosity, but that “it was the product of an inner barrier that has been implanted in the minds of not just Indians but also Americans, Europeans, and many other people across the world, through certain patterns of global history.”
All South Asia is impacted by the same patterns. Even Pakistan, for all its enmities with India and long-lasting military and economic ties with China, is influenced more by its common shared culture and history prior to partition than by its partnerships over the Himalayas.
Both before and after independence in 1971, Bangladesh has never had a shortage of politicians or commentators proclaiming the desirability of building closer links with China.
Discount the fact that it can play well politically to hedge against domination by India, that is not as significant as China being the nation’s largest trading partner and source of imports. Whether via investments in various Bangladeshi companies or in building the Padma bridge, benefits are simple to see.
Yet, if we take a few steps back, the bigger picture for all South Asia is that on some developmental and socio-economic indicators, it is falling further (and faster) behind most of East and SE Asia. At least and especially when it comes to key economic indicators.
World Bank tables record China as the world’s biggest exporter having exported $3,792 billion worth of goods in 2025. Not only is this more than four and a half times the $822bn recorded for tenth placed India, but at over $1.1 trillion, China’s net trade surplus is bigger than the value of all India’s exports.
Vietnam, whose 102 million people have only been unified within an unoccupied independent sovereign republic since 1975, recorded $429bn of exports in 2025, which is over eight times the $53bn recorded by Bangladesh’s 175 million population.
No amount of Look East rhetoric can disguise the fact that some useful lessons members of ASEAN can offer the peoples of South Asia are not being learned or applied by South Asia’s politicians and elites. The inner barrier talked about by Amitav Ghosh has a tangible impact.
In this context, it’s attractive to imagine scenarios by which Bangladesh could have diverged closer towards some of the policies that have benefited people in ASEAN nations.
A daydream developed when I looked at a map of the world coloured by International Direct Dialling codes.
The International Telecommunication Union first assigned IDD codes in the early 1960s. With zero required for linking purposes, the codes had to start with the digits 1 to 9.
This lent itself to primarily assigning regional codes by continent with the United States and Soviet Union as superpowers being allowed their own single digit codes.
Having the largest landline network, the US bagged the +01 Zone 1 code (bringing along Canada and much of the Caribbean which were integrated into the near monopoly the Bell System of AT&T maintained till the 1980s,) leaving the Soviet Union with lucky number 7.
Following the breakup of the USSR, most of its constituent states were re-assigned to other regions, with Kazakhstan choosing to continue sharing the code inherited by Russia.
When Bangladesh became independent, international calls were nothing at all like touching a screen on WhatsApp today. Booking a call slot via an operator and sometimes having to wait hours for a line was common. The IDD region map shows that at some point, Bangladesh was given an East and SE Asia Zone 8 code (+880) replacing Pakistan’s +92 code.
Hence, Bangladesh stands out amid the large Central, South, and West Asia Zone 9 that ranges from Turkey and Yemen across to Mongolia and Myanmar. Instead, it is part of Zone 8 alongside China, Japan, Korea, Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos, and Taiwan. (Asean’s other SE Asian members are added to Oceania’s Zone 6 region code.)
So much for the internet, you can imagine your own daydreams.
Returning to reality, it seems the most anyone hopes for from the impending election is that domestic business confidence to invest will revive with political certainty and stability.
As the post-revolution reform agenda promised by the interim government conspicuously devolved in all but name into a glorified caretaker regime, this would be welcome.
Bangladesh’s large domestic market and demographic dividend ensured that for most of the past 30 years, a 6% GDP growth rate was attainable despite much corruption and political instability.
However, in a world increasingly blighted by threats of trade barriers and resource constraints, even getting back to that status quo might be hard to reach.
Unfortunately, as across the rest of South Asia, complacent, inward looking self-satisfied elites tend to prevail in Bangladesh’s politics.
Content to be at the top of the heap in low wage, low investment, low productivity economies built on exploiting cheap labour.
Where meaningful investment in education and skills are for the few, not the many.
Where abroad is not a place where lessons can be learned to apply at home, but a haven for holidays, healthcare, and second homes. Or emigration.
Returning to Vietnam for a moment, not only are its exports more than half the size of all India’s but they are increasingly diversified and of high value.
India may be home to many world-famous tech billionaires and the IT giants of Bengaluru, but in the UN’s top 15 list of high technology exporting countries, Vietnam is ranked at number seven.
With nearly a third of all degrees being STEM related and investment increasing, roots are being nurtured to sustain this further.
Nobody needs to look too far or too deeply at statistics for poverty, malnutrition, and human insecurity in Bangladesh to be saddened.
The real needs of Bangladesh’s people make it a moral imperative for the nation to aspire to much more than the past.
It certainly seems worth overcoming some of the mental barriers holding people back. We must dream better.
Niaz Alam is Dhaka Tribune London Bureau Chief.
