In the small Dhaka apartment of Syed Abdullah Muhammad Taher, the smiling face of Xi Jinping beams out from the cover of a book placed among the Korans on the Islamist leader’s desk.

The senior member of Bangladesh’s Jamaat-e-Islami, a political party and important contender in elections in February, received his copy of The Governance of China – the Chinese president’s five-volume collection of speeches and writings – while visiting Beijing this year to meet Communist party leaders.

“It was an excellent trip, they treated us as government dignitaries. This was the first time China has invited a senior leader from Jamaat,” he says.

Chinese president Xi Jinping's book The Governance of China is displayed at the media centre before the Shanghai Co-operation Organisation summit in Tianjin in August. Photograph: Pedro Pardo/AFP via Getty Images

Taher’s visit to the Chinese capital is part of a broader campaign by Beijing to court not only Bangladesh’s political classes but also leaders from the other countries surrounding India, China’s regional arch-rival, to try to tip the balance of power in south Asia in its favour.

Chinese officials have held at least seven high-profile meetings with Bangladeshi politicians in the 14 months since the interim government of Muhammad Yunus, a former social finance entrepreneur, took office. This compares with eight meetings in the last five-year term of Bangladesh’s long-standing autocrat, Sheikh Hasina.

Beijing officials, meanwhile, have held 22 high-profile meetings this year with counterparts from Pakistan – on track to match last year’s 30. Among the smaller countries surrounding India, Beijing has conducted at least six high-profile meetings with Nepali officials this year and at least five in Sri Lanka.

Behind the diplomatic push is a deeper strategic contest for influence. Both China and India have ambitions to be global leaders, particularly in the developing world. China’s geopolitical manoeuvres keep India preoccupied, while securing Chinese access to the Indian Ocean.

“China sees what India considers to be its neighbourhood to be perfectly fair game for Chinese activities and influence,” says Daniel Markey, senior fellow at the China and south Asia programmes at the Stimson Center. “That it is as much China’s backyard as it is India’s.”

For New Delhi, long-standing fears of being “encircled” by China have never seemed more real, analysts say. India’s policy of drawing closer to the US to offset China’s growing power has been in question since US president Donald Trump took office and unexpectedly slapped a 50 per cent tari