Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank’s Role in Regional Infrastructure Financing

Abstract

The Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB), proposed by China in 2013 and founded in 2014, is one of the world’s newest multilateral development banks (MDBs).

9.1 Establishment of the China-led Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank

The Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB), proposed by China in 2013 and founded in 2014, is one of the world’s newest multilateral development banks (MDBs). However, it has already become the second-largest multilateral institution in the world by membership after the World Bank. Its membership had expanded from 57 founding members in 2015 to 106 approved countries by January 2023, with the African country of Mauritania the latest country to join the bank. The bank’s approved member countries account for over 80% of the world’s population and 65% of the global gross domestic product (GDP). This is a testimonial to AIIB’s evolution from a regional MDB to a global development institution.

The AIIB has been taking an open and inclusive approach towards applications for bank membership since its inception in 2016. The AIIB’s success in attracting both developed and developing countries from Asia and beyond is in turn reinforcing the credibility of the bank regionally as well as globally (Bustillo and Andoni 2018). Nevertheless, the United States and Japan have yet to apply for prospective membership of the bank. These two countries view the creation of the AIIB as a challenge from China to the influence of established MDBs such as the World Bank (WB) and the Asian Development Bank (ADB). They have also expressed their concern that the AIIB may not comply with international norms and practices in terms of financing transparency and viability, and environmental, social and labour safeguards.

According to the bank’s constitution, the mission of the AIIB is to provide infrastructure financing and technical assistance to developing countries in Asia and to promote greater interconnectivity across the region. The AIIB is not only the world’s first MDB dedicated to infrastructure development, but also the first MDB established by China.

Many developing countries in Asia lack both technological know-how and the financial capacity to raise the tremendous amounts of capital to fund their desperately needed infrastructure projects. Studies by the WB, International Monetary Fund (IMF) and ADB have shown that the low- and middle-income countries still need immense infrastructure financing to unleash their development potential and sustain their growth. For example, an updated estimation report, which was published by the ADB in 2017, pointed out that Asia alone will need over US$26 trillion for infrastructure development from 2016 to 2030 to realize its economic growth potential and improve human welfare (see Table 9.1). The established MDBs simply lack sufficient capital to accommodate the huge infrastructure investment need in Asia, giving China the opportunity to seize the initiative through the AIIB.

Table 9.1 Estimated infrastructure needs by region, 2016–2030 (US$ billion in 2015 Prices)

China’s efforts to establish the AIIB were driven by its dissatisfaction with the lack of reform of the West-led international finance institutions over the past decade. With its growing economic clout and global geostrategic influence, China is now a rising global power. Nevertheless, in China’s view, its financial power and economic weight in the world have not been proportionally reflected in the major established MDBs, particularly in terms of decision-making and voting power. China has lacked the discourse power to influence global development financing and international economic governance (Yu 2023). From the Chinese viewpoint, the World Bank, International Monetary Fund and Asian Development Banks are all dominated by the West and aligned too closely with the interests of the United States.

China is hence discontented with the perceived “second-class” treatment and its underrepresentation in the existing MDBs has pushed it to take a two-leg strategy towards the reform of global finance and economic governance. On the one hand, it continually seeks to take a greater role in the established MDBs. Yu’s papers (2017a, b) pointed out that China asserts that it is not attempting to overturn the existing international financing governance, but rather to reform it. On the other, China is ceaselessly striving to create its own multilateral development institutions, such as the AIIB and New Development Bank, over which it can exercise greater control and which will better reflect the changing realities of the global balance of power.

China is the founder and largest shareholder of the AIIB, contributing US$29.78 billion and owning 26.58% of the vote. This signals that China has the de facto veto power over key decisions made by the bank, which require a special majority of 75% of the vote, including the amendment of the bank’s constitution (Articles of Agreement),¹ membership approval and suspension, drawing up the bank’s long-term strategic plans, appointment of the president, increasing capital stock and changing the composition of the bank’s board of directors (AIIB 2021). Other major shareholders of the AIIB include India (7.59% of the vote), Russia (5.97%), Germany (4.15%), South Korea (3.49%), Australia (3.45%), France (3.17%), Indonesia (3.16%), United Kingdom (2.89%) and Turkey (2.49%) (see Fig. 9.1).

Fig. 9.1

Source AIIB (2022). “Members and Prospective Members of the Bank” available at https://www.aiib.org/en/about-aiib/governance/members-of-bank/index.html, updated on 26 October 2022

Distribution of voting power among AIIB’s members.

9.2 The AIIB’s “Asian First” Characteristic

The AIIB was created with a strong “Asian first” characteristic (Yu 2023). According to Article 1 of the bank’s Articles of Agreement, the mission of the bank is “to improve infrastructure connectivity in Asia by investing in infrastructure and other productive sectors”. The design of the AIIB membership structure is distinguished by its balance between regional and non-regional members. Regional members hold 72.8% of the total voting power in the AIIB and non-regional members hold 27.2%.

Meanwhile, the Asian Development Bank (ADB) (with 68 members, 49 from Asia and the Pacific, and 19 from other continents outside Asia), which was founded in 1966, has traditionally been the dominant player in development financing in Asia since its inception. Nevertheless, its regional members hold 65.04% of the ADB’s total voting power, while non-regional members hold 34.96%. Therefore, Asian members of the AIIB tend to have more influence than their counterparts in the ADB. In addition, members from Asian countries account for seven of the top 10 shareholders in the AIIB, holding 53.2% of the bank’s total votes.

The AIIB’s unique governance structure and operational mechanism is reflected in its overwhelming dominance by Asian countries and thus the limited influence of non-regional countries. Compared with other international organizations, the AIIB gives Asian countries a greater say than in the past. Western countries, with their economic power, have usually had majority voting rights on MDBs’ boards and councils and dominated their decisions. As argued in Yu’s study (2023), the “Asian focus” and “Asian first” characteristic that has been institutionalized within the design of the AIIB will facilitate Asian countries’ participation in the decision-making process of the bank and ensure that they have the dominant role in the bank’s management and operation. This is reinforced by the fact that India, Indonesia and Turkey are the main Asian recipient countries in terms of project quantity and value.

Compared to other MDBs, the governance structure and voting rights arrangements of the AIIB are clearly tilted towards Asian countries. Among the bank’s senior management team, its president is a Chinese national, while two among the five vice presidents are also from Asia (see Table 9.2). In addition, among the 11-member AIIB Board of Directors, the bank’s highest decision-making body, seven are from Asian countries, namely Saudi Arabia, China, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Vietnam, Indonesia and South Korea. The creation of the AIIB has given Asian countries in general and the developing countries in particular a greater voice and role in regional development financing and infrastructure development.

Table 9.2 List of AIIB’s senior management team

The bank’s charter gives the AIIB’s President and management a relatively greater degree of decision-making power, which enables the AIIB to act quickly and efficiently to make real-time decisions on project reserve and project design through to final operation, although its Board of Directors retains the veto power for project approval. The AIIB’s governance structure is divided into three tiers: Board of Governors, Board of Directors, and Management. The Board of Directors is the highest authority of the Bank and may delegate certain powers to the Board of Directors and Management in accordance with the AIIB’s Articles of Agreement (Lichtenstein 2018). In contrast to the established MDBs, the AIIB has an unpaid non-resident Board of Directors. MDBs generally have permanent Boards of Directors to manage day-to-day working operations, but these are associated with high costs, low efficiency and bureaucracy.

The day-to-day operations of the AIIB are entrusted to the President and management. Its non-resident Board of Directors meets regularly once a year to deliberate on major issues, such as the AIIB’s development strategy, lending policies and standards, but other meetings can be arranged as required. This streamlined approach helps to reduce operational expenditure, enhance operational efficiency and eliminate red tape, thereby freeing up more funds for project investments.

9.3 China’s Role in the AIIB

China has played a critical and prominent role in the creation of the AIIB. Xi Jinping, China’s President, announced the plan to create the bank during his official trip to Indonesia in October 2013, marking the first such initiative by a non-Western state (Ransdell 2019). Moreover, while the WB and IMF both have their headquarters in Washington DC, the AIIB’s headquarters are located in Beijing, China’s capital.

By leveraging on the AIIB, China seeks to take a lead in the new wave of Asian regionalism. Its injection of Chinese thinking/ideas and proposals into the establishment of the AIIB has enabled China to contribute to regional economic governance and regionalism in Asia while serving its own national interests.

China has been successful in attracting both developed and developing countries as the “followership” of the bank. The popularity of the AIIB’s founding membership proposals and its current membership representing 106 countries worldwide reflect China’s important role in a new form of regionalism in Asia.

Despite China leading the establishment of the AIIB and being the largest shareholder, with a de facto veto power, the AIIB does not belong to China. This was clearly acknowledged by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs (2023) in outlining China’s official stance on its relationship with the bank:

China actively plays its role as a shareholder, donor, and host country of the AIIB, follows multilateral rules and procedures, participates in decision-making through multilateral governance mechanisms such as the council and the board of directors, and strengthens communication and coordination with members and management.

In the years since the AIIB’s inception, China has seemed intent on downplaying the influence of its voting power in the bank’s decision-making mechanism and adhering to its commitment to make decisions on major issues in a multilateral, open and transparent manner on the basis of communication and consultation with relevant parties. Although it is the largest shareholder in the bank, the AIIB lends much less to China than many other member countries, such as India and Indonesia. As of January 2023, the AIIB had approved 15 projects in China, with a total loan commitment of US$3.445 billion.

In June 2023, Bob Pickard, the former Director General for Communications at the AIIB, publicly accused China of political interference in the AIIB’s operation and management, and claimed that the bank was controlled by Chinese Communist Party members, who “operate like internal secret police” (Leahy et al. 2023). Following Pickard’s accusation, the Canadian government announced that Canada would be halting all government-led activity with the bank and conducting a review. Ms. Chrystia Freeland, Canada’s Finance Minister and Deputy Prime Minister, threatened that Canada might even withdraw its membership of the AIIB eventually. In a statement reacting to Pickard’s accusation, the bank states that his allegation on the AIIB was baseless, and the AIIB welcomed the review announced by the Canadian government and would be cooperating fully (AIIB 2023a).

However, Bob Pickard has to date not offered any concrete evidence to substantiate this accusation. If the bank were controlled by the Chinese Communist Party and solely serving Chinese interests, the 105 member countries and territories would not have joined the AIIB. The AIIB’s website has a comprehensive database listing all currently approved and proposed projects. Since every step of the AIIB project process has to comply with the abovementioned rules, regulations and norms, the bank has to undertake thorough evaluation of the merits, goals, costs and social and environmental impacts of all its projects. In its operations, the AIIB has thus far upheld its commitment to institutional transparency, accountability and openness.

In 2017, the AIIB further enhanced its worldwide credibility by securing short- and long-term triple-A issuers ratings from the three most important international credit rating agencies. Moreover, maintenance of the high standards and best practices required by the WB and IMF could facilitate low-cost borrowing by AIIB from the international capital market, which in turn would help the AIIB to lend at more favourable interest rates (Gu 2017).

Although the AIIB and the BRI were both initiated by China’s President Xi Jinping, the AIIB was not created to serve such Chinese interests. Certainly, both the BRI and the AIIB are focused on investment in sectors such as energy, transportation, and telecommunications and promotion of interregional connectivity through regional infrastructure improvement. However, the BRI is China’s own initiative, while the AIIB has to abide by internationally recognized standards that require a multilateral approach whereby lending is based on consultation and communication with all member countries. Some BRI-affiliated projects are indeed strategically guided and lack economic viability, but the projects financed by the AIIB have to be financially sustainable, environmentally friendly and welcomed by the local community in the recipient countries. In an interview, the director of the AIIB’s Investment Operations Bureau commented as follows (Zhou 2018):

The AIIB will never invest in ‘white elephant’ projects, or participate in some projects that consume huge cost resources but have low practicality. On the premise of profit, it serves a practical use for the local society, while not harming the local environment.

There have, however, been claims that the BRI’s unilateral implementation approach has resulted in environmental damage, local community opposition, lack of project financing transparency and fair bidding, insufficient consultation with multiple local stakeholders in the BRI countries. A report published by the Asia Society Policy Institute in June 2019 claimed that “… China’s laissez-faire approach to infrastructure development makes it easier for Chinese actors to secure project deals and allows developers to benefit by cutting corners and evading responsibility for legal, social, labour, environmental, and other issues”. (Asia Society Policy Institute, 2019)

The AIIB Code of Conduct for Bank Personnel clearly states that bank personnel should remain independent from the influence of any governments, organizations and other entities. Meanwhile, China, although precluded from using the AIIB directly as a tool to fulfil its ambitious BRI agenda, is using the bank as leverage in pushing forward the BRI. It is hence not an exaggeration to claim that the AIIB is intended to project China’s influence in Asia and beyond, and thereby to facilitate the BRI’s implementation. In May 2017, the AIIB, and six other multilateral development banks, including the World Bank, signed the Memorandum of Understanding with China on Strengthening Cooperation in Related Areas under the BRI, aiming to build a stable, diversified and sustainable financing mechanism for the Belt and Road Initiative.

Behind China’s efforts to create the AIIB lies an aim to influence developing Asian countries to follow its infrastructure and economic development model. China is Asia’s largest economy and has the potential to challenge Japan’s position as the traditional leader of economic development in Asia over the past decades.

China’s de facto veto power and decisive influence in the AIIB could potentially undermine AIIB’s legitimacy as a multilateral development organization if China were to choose to exercise its considerable powers in the bank’s operation and management. Nevertheless, it is not in China’s interest to undermine AIIB’s operations and credibility by intervening in or controlling the bank’s operations. China thus far has not made any attempts to do so and it is likely that China will in future continue to exercise restraint in this regard.

Before the creation of the multilateral AIIB, China predominantly provided bilateral financial support for infrastructure development, primarily through the domestic banks. The establishment of the AIIB not only signals China’s shift towards a multilateral model for infrastructure investment but also reflects a broad change in its conduct of economic diplomacy.

9.4 The AIIB’s Lending Operation in Practice

Since its commencement in January 2016, the AIIB has adhered to the same high international standards, norms and practices as the other established MDBs in its operations and management. Specifically, the AIIB’s Board of Directors has successively approved and implemented the “Code of Conduct for Bank Personnel”, “Environmental and Social Framework”, “Policy on Prohibited Practices”, “AIIB Project-affected People’s Mechanism”, “Procurement Policy” and “AIIB Debarment List”,² among others, which are all publicly available for reference on the bank’s website.

The AIIB had approved a total of 202 projects from 2016 to 2022, amounting to total financing of more than US$38.8 billion, involving sustainable infrastructure construction and green recovery of member economies in the fields of energy, transportation, water, telecommunications, education and public health, with projects located in 33 countries. Despite various challenges to its operations, including the shifting geostrategic environment, the COVID-19 pandemic and China’s strict Zero-COVID policy, the bank is rapidly increasing its lending in regional countries.

The AIIB has approved infrastructure development projects ranging from transportation, telecommunications, energy to economic resilience programmes for countries suffering from the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic. The number of projects approved annually by the AIIB rose to 36 in 2022 from 8 in 2016 (Fig. 9.2). In total, the bank had approved 191 projects in 33 member countries, worth over US$36.44 billion, by October 2022, as an indication of China’s new approach to international financing and infrastructure development abroad.

Fig. 9.2

Source AIIB, 2023b. “Project Summary”, status as on 23 June, 2023

Annual approved projects by the AIIB.

The bank is also opening up new positions and conducting new recruitment exercises to attract more infrastructure investment specialists in transportation, energy, water management, telecommunications, and urban development. Currently, there are around 400 full-time staff from over 65 countries working in its headquarters in Beijing. The AIIB aims to double its staff headcount to around 800–900 by 2030.³

The working language in the AIIB is English. The vice presidents and senior management team of the bank are very diverse in terms of nationality, background and expertise. According to an AIIB vice president, Chinese nationals account for barely 25% of total bank staff.⁴ Although the United States and Japan are non-member states, the AIIB has hired both American and Japanese staff.

The AIIB has implemented several major measures to expand its lending, enhance its lending practices, and mitigate the impacts to its operations brought about by the three-year-long COVID-19 pandemic. Since commencing operations in 2016, the AIIB has been engaging in co-financing of AIIB-approved infrastructure projects by partnering with existing MDBs which already have regional offices in project recipient countries. The AIIB has formed complementary working relationships with many other global and regional MDBs, such as the IMF, the World Bank and ADB, to jointly promote development financing in the region and beyond. On the one hand, cooperation with the established MDBs, governments and enterprises of the recipient countries has enabled the AIIB to diversify its lending risks by sharing the financial burden. Through such co-financing initiatives with other MDBs, the AIIB can draw on and learn from the partnering banks’ rich experience in infrastructure financing and potentially avoid their mistakes.

Over 80% of AIIB’s project lending practices (19 out of 23 AIIB-approved projects) in the first two operating years involved learning by doing through co-financing with the established MDBs. These initiatives helped the bank to quickly internalize the standards, norms and practices of international development financing which are respected and adhered to by the established MDBs.

On the other hand, engaging in such a co-financing model would allow the AIIB to involve the regional office staff of its partner MDBs in project selection, on-site project monitoring and supervision. The AIIB could use feedback from partnering MDBs within its own assessment of the vitality of its investment projects.

In July 2022, the AIIB’s Board of Directors approved the establishment of a regional office in Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates (UAE), as the bank’s first overseas office. The UAE is one of the fast-growing emerging economies and this new office will help the AIIB expand its investment business and lending operations in the Middle East, Africa and Latin America. Furthermore, having regional offices closer to its clients and front lines of its business could enhance the bank’s supervision of its growing investment portfolio and strengthen its project monitoring and local implementation of services.

Another measure adopted by the AIIB to expand its lending was the establishment of the AIIB Project Preparation Special Fund. This offers financial support for borrowers from developing countries with less technical experience in terms of infrastructure project preparation. China, the United Kingdom and South Korea have contributed to the AIIB Project Preparation Fund, which had total assets of US$104.8 million as of 31 March 2019 (AIIB 2019a). This fund has disbursed US$0.3 million and US$0.02 million to Nepal and Pakistan for an urban infrastructure improvement project in the former and water and wastewater management projects in the latter.

The image of the AIIB among the international community has so far been largely positive. Its core values of “Lean, Clean and Green” are reflected in the AIIB’s ethical Code of Conduct for Bank Personnel which was adopted in January 2016 and applied to all bank personnel, including the president, vice presidents and the whole senior management team. The AIIB’s multilateral approach to infrastructure financing in the region involves commitment to an open tendering process, international competitive bidding and international procurement guidelines.

The AIIB has clearly shown that “flexibility” will not be allowed to creep in and compromise its standards and practices of loan selection and approval procedures. As Jin Liqun (AIIB, 2019b), the AIIB’s president, stated during his opening address to the Meeting of the AIIB Board of Governors 2019:

And – in adherence to our values of being lean, clean and green – we set the bar on a par with the governance structure of other MDBs, …. Quality means selecting projects with high economic returns, designing them well and financing them sustainably. Quality means ensuring that projects benefit the local population, do no harm to people or the environment and leave no chance for corruption. This is what it means to be lean, clean and green.

The increase in the bank’s approved projects from 8 in 2016 to 50 in 2021, before slightly decreasing to 36 in 2022 due to the impacts of the global COVID-19 pandemic (Fig. 9.2), demonstrates that the bank is quickly building up its lending capacity. India is by far the largest borrower country by value, accounting for around a quarter of the bank’s total loan portfolio, while China, Turkey, Indonesia and Bangladesh are the bank’s other major borrowers. Its audited financial report indicates that although it is still in the start-up stage, the AIIB is making decent profit for its shareholders.

The AIIB has since 2018 been shifting towards a model of less reliance on co-financing. This shift implies that the AIIB is becoming more confident in its own lending practices and expanding the geographical footprint of its lending operations. In July 2019, AIIB President Jin Liqun stated that the bank intends to expand the reach of its loan programmes beyond Asia. In January 2022, the bank approved its first project in Brazil to fund Banco de Desenvolvimento de Minas Gerais SA (BDMG) (a Brazilian Development Bank) for the BDMG Renewables and Asia Connectivity Facility. This move indicates that the AIIB is on the right track to become a formidable competitor for the existing West-dominated MDBs in terms of infrastructure financing.

9.5 Moving Forward

In the past, many AIIB project loans were initially proposed and financed by the WB, ADB or the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development and supervised under WB and ADB rules and regulations. The AIIB has contributed additional funding to the existing financing mechanism for regional infrastructure development, but its involvement in such project financing has been merely as a minority or junior partner.

The AIIB still has much ground to make up in terms of its capacity to take a lead in financing regional development. While the AIIB has started to affect the established architecture of infrastructure financing in Asia, it has yet to become a dominant or influential player. For now, the Western countries and their four dominant MDBs (namely the WB, the IMF, the ADB, and the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development) still have relatively firm control of the international financial market.

The New Development Bank (NDB) is a multilateral development bank that was established by Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa (BRICS) in 2015, around the same time as the AIIB. The establishment of these two new MDBs resulted from shared geostrategic and geoeconomic dissatisfaction on the parts of China and other BRICS countries regarding the slow reform of an international financial governance system dominated by the West (Hofman and Srinivas 2022). In the eyes of the BRICS leaders, their countries’ economic power is rising rapidly, but this is not reflected in the existing international financial and economic architecture, where their interests are underrepresented. Although BRICS countries combined accounted for over 30% of global GDP, they have little say in the way in which established MDBs, such as the WB, IMF and ADB, are run. This dissatisfaction was clearly stated in the III BRICS Sanya Declaration (2011):

We call for a quick achievement of the targets for the reform of the International Monetary Fund agreed to at previous G20 Summits and reiterate that the governing structure of the international financial institutions should reflect the changes in the world economy, increasing the voice and representation of emerging economies and developing countries.

In 2021, the NDB admitted four new member countries, namely Bangladesh, Uruguay, the United Arab Emirates and Egypt. In comparison to the China-led AIIB, all five founding BRICS countries have equal voting shares in the NDB. The bank has an authorized capital of US$100 billion, which is divided into one million shares that have a par value of $100,000 each. Founding members each had a 20% share of the NDB’s capital and were allocated equal shares (see Table 9.3).

Table 9.3 Shareholding of the NDB

Despite China’s economy being far larger than those of the other four BRICS countries combined, the NDB shareholding structure provides equal voice to all BRICS countries. As stated in the Agreement on the NDB, the presidency of the bank is rotated among the founding BRICS countries. China’s influence in the NDB is expected to be lower than in the AIIB as it has no veto power over the bank’s critical decisions. (NDB 2014)

The NDB had approved 74 projects worth US$29.14 billion by December 2021. All of its lending has been to the five BRICS countries, whereas the AIIB had approved a total of 191 projects in 33 member countries, with investments of over US$36.44 billion up to October 2022. The AIIB and NDB’s partnerships with other established MDBs complement their efforts to finance regional infrastructure development in the region and beyond.

The AIIB is an ambitious project that demonstrates China’s commitment to regional infrastructure financing. As stated by Xi Jinping in 2014, the AIIB’s primary task is to finance infrastructure development in Asia, which echoes well the stated mission of the BRI (Yu 2017). Indeed, many projects currently financed by the AIIB are in countries along the Belt and Road routes, which have established friendly and trusted relations with China over the years (Yu 2022).

The AIIB is, however, facing global geostrategic challenges arising from the power rivalry between China and the United States, Russia’s war against Ukraine and the deteriorating domestic economic and financing situations in many member countries largely due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Against the backdrop of intensifying power competition between China and the United States, funding of infrastructure by the AIIB is likely in the near future to play an increasingly important role in China’s efforts to win over the support of developing countries in Asia and beyond.

The AIIB is a reflection of China’s ambitions regarding development financing in Asia. However, in the face of international rules, standards and practices shaped by the West-dominated MDBs, at present it is performing a complementary role in international development financing by partnering with other MDBs and making additional financing contributions (Yu 2023). Compared to its existing MDB peers in general and the WB and ADB in particular, the AIIB’s overall approved lending portfolio still has only a relatively small number of investment projects. China consequently still has some way to go before it can credibly claim the leadership role in Asian infrastructure financing.