Rush to Join AIIB Reflects China’s Growing Financial Clout

中国日益增长的经济实力和作为一个示范political clout, few things rival the launch of the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank, Beijing’s challenge to the U.S.-dominated international financial order. What started modestly with the signing of a memorandum of understanding by 21 mostly Asian nations last October turned into a rush last month as 47 countries — including the U.K., Germany, Brazil and South Korea — announced their intention to participate before the March 31 deadline set by Chinese officials. In the end, only Japan among major economies sided with Washington in shunning the AIIB.

“China is now exerting more influence,” Eisuke Sakakibara, a former senior Japanese Finance Ministry official, tells亚博赞助欧冠. China is “now No. 2 in the world, and it will probably surpass the U.S. within 20 or 25 years” in terms of gross domestic product, he adds.

中国在吸引支持者方面的外交成功仍然对AIIB留下了几个大的未解决问题，包括如何受到管辖，无论中国以外的成员是否会对其运营有意义，以及它可以快速有效地开始融资项目。本周晚些时候在华盛顿可能出现一些答案，当时来自世界各地的财政部长和中央银行州长聚集在春季会议上International Monetary Fundand the World Bank Group, where the AIIB promises to be a major topic of discussion.

中国未能在国际货币基金组织和世界银行赢得更大的影响力和投票权，是其在发动AIIB，官员和分析师发布的决定后的主要因素。国际货币基金组织成员于2010年同意到配额改革，这些改革将增加中国和印度快速增长的新兴经济体的投票权，但改革尚未生效，因为美国大会拒绝批准他们。美国将基金占据17.69％的配额和投票权;虽然中国现在是世界第二大经济体，但它在国际货币基金组织的第六次在日本，德国，法国和U.K的背后排名第六。 - 份额为4％。

“The Chinese government is determined to set up the AIIB because China has been a rising economic power and the global community has expected China to provide a lot of public goods, but the post–Bretton Woods system is completely controlled by the U.S. and the World Bank, IMF and Asian Development Bank,” says Yuqing Xing, director of Asian Economic Policy at the National Graduate Institute for Policy Studies in Tokyo. “For China, the issue is how we can use our money more productively, not just in the traditional sense of return on capital but also to strengthen China’s influence and its soft power and to promote its economic development and globalization.”

当Excequer George Osborne的校长宣布U.K.将成为第一个签署谅解备忘录的西部国家，并将在3月中旬开始加入AIIB的最后一分钟。这一行动激怒了英国的欧盟合作伙伴。所有国家都已同意留在人工线上，直到中国提供了保证新银行的治理和透明度标准与现有多边贷方的透明度标准相吻合，这是一名德语的高级官员，伦敦“跳了枪为了获得优势。“消息人士称，U.K.希望在欧布的欧洲办事处，并吸引更多人民币计价的业务到伦敦。Ultimately, a number of EU countries — including France, Germany, Italy, Luxembourg, the Netherlands and Sweden — decided it was also in their interest to join the new bank, which could help their companies win contracts for some of the AIIB’s projected multibillion-dollar infrastructure projects.

In the closing days of March, a string of countries announced their intention to join the AIIB, including Brazil, Russia and India, which have also agreed to set up a so-called BRICS bank with China; Australia and South Korea, key U.S. allies in Asia that Washington had urged not to participate, and Egypt and Turkey. China rebuffed a membership bid from North Korea because of the country’s lack of transparency and its debts, and turned away Taiwan because of its one-China policy, according to sources who attended a closed briefing on the AIIB given in November by the bank’s president-designate, Jin Liqun, a former deputy Finance minister.

That left the U.S. and Japan as the principal holdouts. On March 30, U.S. Treasury secretary Jacob Lew paid a surprise visit to Beijing to meet with Premier Li Keqiang and other senior officials. He said Washington looked forward to cooperating with the AIIB and welcomed any proposals that would promote infrastructure development. Such cooperation could be carried out through the U.S.-China Strategic and Economic Dialogue, the World Bank and the ADB, Lew said, according to Chinese vice minister of finance Zhu Guangyao.

Washington has the most to lose from a successful AIIB, given that the U.S. designed the Bretton Woods architecture of the international financial system, is the only country with veto power at the two institutions and by tradition has named the World Bank president and IMF deputy managing director.

In Japan, Finance minister Taro Aso said on March 31 that the government remained “very cautious” about the China-led bank and had concerns regarding the AIIB’s governance and its policies on debt sustainability in borrowing countries and environmental and social safeguards in infrastructure projects. “Unless these conditions are secured, Japan has no choice but to be very cautious about joining,” Aso said.

日本长期以来在亚洲经济发展议程中发挥着主导作用，通过亚洲开发银行。它是菲律宾的贷方马尼拉的主要股东，以及美国，传统上提名其总统。现任总统Takehiko Nakao是日本财政部的前任官员。他的前任Haruhiko Kuroda现在是日本央行的州长。除了AIIB作为初学者之外，一些日本官员在亚行担心，新银行通过提供更好的财务条款，新银行可以通过提供更好的财务来抢夺该地区的最佳和最具便携利项目。

但现有的球员似乎迅速调整到新人。在北京的出现在3月下旬，董事总经理Christine Lagardesaid the IMF would be “delighted” to cooperate with the AIIB, while in Washington last week World Bank presidentJim Yong Kimwelcomed the creation of the AIIB and the BRICS nations’ proposed New Development Bank, calling them “potentially strong allies in tackling the enormous challenge of bringing much-needed infrastructure to Asia.”

China has said very little so far concerning the precise role of the AIIB and how it will complement or compete with the existing array of multilateral development banks. At the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit meeting in Beijing late last year, President Xi Jinping said the AIIB would focus on transportation infrastructure linking Asia and Europe and would work alongside the China-funded $40 billionSilk RoadFund. Chinese officials say the AIIB will lend mostly to the public sector, as the World Bank and ADB do, while the Silk Road Fund will concentrate on aiding the private sector, like the International Finance Corp., the World Bank’s private sector lending arm.

The ADB’s Nakao has also raised the possibility of co-financing projects with the AIIB. “It is not a zero-sum game,” he said in Beijing in March after talks with Finance minister Lou Jiwei.

Western countries apparently agreed to join the AIIB without resolving a number of key issues surrounding its governance and potential domination by China.

北京提出，中国占AIIB最初50亿美元的50％的50％，这一金额可以扩大到19亿美元的协会草案下。该机构将基于北京，由中国国家晋逃逸。中国官员们还出现了在大多数其他多边银行的实践中展示了居民执行董事（EDS）在银行总部监督业务，并确保项目遵守透明度和环境标准的行动。Masahiro Kawai，北京指定的高管将能够在缺乏董事会的情况下对银行进行强烈控制，这是一个亚太银行官员Masahiro Kawai委员会。

Jin, who previously chaired state-controlled investment bank China International Capital Corp. and the sovereign wealth fund China Investment Corp., reportedly gave assurances at the closed seminar in Beijing that the AIIB would observe internationally accepted governance standards. But Jin, who also spent several years as a vice president at the ADB, is reportedly skeptical about the merits of having resident EDs, regarding them as an unnecessary layer of bureaucracy that slows down project approvals at other multilateral development banks.

In an address in Singapore in early April, Jin said that China would have the biggest share in the bank, based on the size of its economy, but would not dominate its operations, according to China’s official Xinhua news agency. “China is just a leading member,” he was quoted as saying. He also promised that the AIIB would be “clean, lean and green,” with “zero tolerance” of corruption and strict observance of environmental standards.

“Right now China’s influence [in the AIIB] is too big, so that it would not become a genuine international organization,” says Japan’s Sakakibara. “China has to reduce its shares and to ask other big countries, like the U.S. and Japan, to participate with significant shareholdings. Moreover, they have to come up with some kind of board where decisions are made. Right now it looks as though the decisions will be made solely by China.”

Other Chinese sources predict the government will take steps to address the concerns of other countries on governance issues. China has “no choice” but to do so, Xing-Guang Ling, a member of the China-Japan AIIB Joint Research Group of academics and former diplomats, said at a briefing in Tokyo in February: “Developing countries also want to see a debate on these issues.”

国家政策研究所的邢说，如果在3月31日加入31年，其他国家将掌握影响AIIB最终结构的机会，这是许多国家似乎已采用的观点。但是，中国将坚持在银行中有“控制股权”，他补充道。

With nearly $4 trillion of foreign exchange reserves, China has no financial need of outside members at the AIIB. According to Kawai, Jin told the Beijing seminar that the AIIB would borrow dollar funds within China, tapping banks and state-owned enterprises, rather than seek such funds on international bond markets, where the AIIB’s lack of a triple-A credit rating could be an obstacle. With such financial wherewithal, Beijing can afford to call the shots in the new bank.

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