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2 Jul, 2015

Why Washington failed to stop the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank

by Ding Gang

Beijing, (People’s Daily Online)  July 01, 2015 – Representatives of 57 prospective founding members of the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB) gathered in Beijing on Monday for the signing ceremony, with 50 of them endorsing the AIIB agreement. The bank is regarded as a bold attempt for China to expand its international influence and challenge the US influence, BBC reports.

The launch of the AIIB has sparked two worries in particular from the United States.

First, the United States fears the AIIB will overthrow the existing international financial system. But why would China do this?

Thanks to its own efforts and integration with the outside world, China has achieved fruitful achievements in economic and social development since 1978, the year when China began to carry out reform and an open-door policy. Clearly, China has no any reason and any motive to break the current international trade and financial systems. Simultaneously, China’s development has brought opportunities for the system to improve.

An article, written by the columnist Philip Stephens and posted at FT.com on June 1, gave the typical American-style concern an answer: China does not mean to overturn the current international order, whether the “One Belt, One Road” initiative or the AIIB, China has conveyed a clear message to the world: it intends to be both a rule taker and a rule maker .

The launch of AIIB aims to further improve the existing systems since the current one cannot completely adapt to Asian development. It will have its own running rules to grow on, while not to looking to violate the old ones.

Indeed, fear of the AIIB is ultimately fear of China’s rise. The divergent views of the bank are just part of how to react to China’s rise-which is ultimately the broader issue, David Pilling, Asian editor for the Financial Times, believes.

Human progress cannot exclude 1.3 billion Chinese people. Growing stronger, China is the inevitable result of powerful engines for global development. China has the responsibility to do what it can to make contributions to Asia and the rest of the world.

Second, the United States fears it will be not able to dominate the rules of multilateral cooperation and will not be a world leader any longer. “We must ensure that it is the United States not China to make rules for the world economic order”, stressed Obama recently.

The United States does not want to provide another source of assistance, but continue to dominate the world, Nobel Laureate in economics Joseph Stiglitz came to point out.

To learn how to cooperate and listen to others is not an easy task for the United States, as it has gotten used to being in the spotlight for a long time.

The United States needs to reflect on why it failed to stop or delay the fast and resolute steps of the AIIB or weaken the applause or positive response?

The AIIB is the product in line with Asian development and the product of the evolution of new international relations. It is also the inevitable result of the global multilateral financial cooperation with win-win cooperation as its basic idea.

Stephen A. Schwarzman, Chairman, CEO and Co-Founder of Blackstone, believes the AIIB will make more money investing into the infrastructure while also helping to improve people’s lives. These reasons alone explain why many Asian and European countries have made active response to it.

The author is Ding Gang, a senior editor with the People’s Daily.