On April 25, the Simon Chair’s Reconnecting Asia Project hosted a conversation with Natalie Lichtenstein, Chief Counsel for the 57-country negotiations that led to the AIIB’s founding and the principal drafter of the Bank’s charter, to discuss her new book: A Comparative Guide to the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank.
“Beijing’s star is rising in central and eastern European nations,” reports the Financial Times, citing data collected in collaboration with the CSIS Reconnecting Asia Project.
The magnitude of the Balkan Silk Road project poses a mixture of opportunities and policy challenges for countries engaging in or seeking to benefit from its implementation.
After the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB) was first proposed by Chinese President Xi Jinping in 2013, a number of observers, including within Japan and the United States, questioned its underlying motivations. The intensity with which the bank was both attacked and defended in the period before it opened its doors has thrown a spotlight on debates that existed long before Xi’s 2013 announcement. Chief among them are fundamental questions about who should dictate the rules of global governance and what role multilateral development banks (MDBs) should play in carrying them out. The AIIB concluded its second annual meeting in Jeju Island, South Korea on June 16, yet many of those questions remain open.
Quotes and Quotas is a weekly digest of phrases and facts that help explain Asia’s infrastructure push.