US Powerless To Stop European Nations from Joining AIIB

U.K.-based newspaper The Financial Times reported that France, Germany and Italy have all agreed to join the Chinese-led Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB), bringing the number of member nations to 31 in total. The three nations’ requests to join the AIIB followed close behind that of the United Kingdom and are significant not only in expanding the bank’s “circle of friends,” but also in their implication that the United States is now powerless to stop China from establishing the institution.

China has taken the lead with the AIIB, aiming to promote infrastructural investment throughout Asia in fields such as transportation, energy and telecommunications. China raised the proposition in October 2013, and on Oct. 24, 2014, the first group of 21 prospective founding member nations that included China, India and Singapore signed a memorandum of understanding. The United States rejected an invitation to participate, and further admonished its allies — including Australia, South Korea, the United Kingdom and other European nations — not to join the AIIB. But with the United Kingdom becoming the first non-Asian nation to apply for entry into the AIIB and France, Germany and Italy following suit, it seems that many U.S. allies disagree with how the United States has resisted the AIIB in order to check China.

According to the analysis in The Financial Times, the issue of the AIIB represents a new conflict within U.S.-Chinese competition. It further commented that a contest between the two states to win the throne of global economic leadership in the 21st century is inevitable; that as the standing leader, the United States naturally wishes that China would support the international rules and institutions that the United States has led for 70 years; and that as a rising power, China naturally intends to challenge a status quo that it has had no hand in making, and subsequently forge its own restructured order. The reality, however, is that China has been given the opportunity to develop by the existing international order, and it has no designs on challenging the United States. But said international order is an imperfect one, and China’s efforts to establish the AIIB are a move to improve matters. By establishing a new model of great power relations, the United States and China can avoid the historical clashes that see coexistence and cooperation become difficult between rising and established powers.

Mutual benefit has become the hallmark of Chinese diplomacy. The problem is that the United States urges China to undertake responsibility commensurate with its growing strength, but the United States only stands in the way when China moves in that direction, as it has with the AIIB. Such behavior is shortsighted and hypocritical. The United States should adjust course and, like the United Kingdom and other U.S. allies, let wisdom prevail in choosing to accept China’s invitation to join the AIIB. The United States should also encourage the World Bank and other multilateral financial mechanisms to cooperate closely with the new institution. By doing so, the AIIB will be able to play a more positive role in the global economy, advance regional development, and bring greater prosperity to the entire world.