A China-led infrastructure development bank is coming — and it may be sooner than you think.
The still tentatively named Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank was a deeply debated issue during and immediately after the Asian Development Bank’s annual meeting two weeks ago, and intense speculation over the planned financial institution, its members and contributors — and the role it will play in Asia’s development — continues to simmer.
Now it seems like the AIIB, proposed last October by Chinese President Xi Jinping during the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation Summit in Bali, could be established within the year with an operating capital of $50 billion, several reports indicate. To date, neither the United States nor Japan, ADB’s top two shareholders, have been invited to join the AIIB. Both countries have been perceived as losing out to China in the race to develop Africa’s infrastructure, so the creation of an Asian infrastructure bank led by China could come across as another big win for the Asian behemoth, this time in its own backyard.