International Law as an Enabler of Maritime Cooperation: A Legal-Geopolitical Analysis of Bangladesh-China Relations in the Bay of Bengal

Abstract

Over five decades, Bangladesh and China have built an increasingly deep strategic and economic partnership, and the Bay of Bengal has become one of the main stages on which that relationship now plays out. This article asks how far international law chiefly the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) together with bilateral instruments and China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), actually structures and constrains maritime cooperation between the two states. After situating the inquiry within the Bay of Bengal’s geopolitical, economic and environmental significance, it traces the historical evolution of Bangladesh-China maritime relations and reviews the literature on international maritime and environmental law. From this base, it develops an integrated theoretical framework combining sovereignty-based realism, institutionalist regime theory, and sustainable-development and resilience perspectives, and it sets out a qualitative, document-based and case-study methodology for tracing how legal frameworks translate into cooperative outcomes across boundary delimitation, resource management, port development and environmental protection. The article goes on to evaluate existing bilateral instruments, identify the legal and geopolitical constraints on cooperation, and examine the Sonadia Deep Sea Port project and BRI-linked infrastructure as illustrative case studies. Its central argument is that UNCLOS and complementary regional arrangements furnish a workable normative architecture, but durable cooperation ultimately depends on aligning legal compliance with the strategic and developmental interests of both states. On this basis, the article offers policymakers a structured way of balancing legal obligation, national interest and regional stability in the Bay of Bengal.