Financial Times writes that when China presented the programme for its G20 presidency to top officials from the world's leading economies last week, Beijing laid out four economically wholesome priorities. China, state councillor Yang Jiechi told the "Sherpas" gathered in Beijing, was eagerfor the G20 to break "a new path for growth" and pursue "more effective" global economic governance, "robust international trade" and "inclusive development". But Mr Yang, China's top foreign policy official, should probably have added a fifth priority: convincing the world's other leading economies that China's leaders were still in control. Tumbling markets and anxieties over the Chinese economy have given President Xi Jinping and his fellow Communist party leaders a more difficult start to Beijing's stint as the G20's rotating chair than it had hoped. But the tricky start to 2016 has also left officials and analysts across the world's other leading economies scratching their heads and pondering new concerns over the impact of China's woes on their own economies.

New York Times reports, "The head of the newly opened Asia Infrastructure Investment Bank said the China-led group is aiming to approve its first loans before the end of the year, part of Beijing's efforts to weave together regional trade partners and solidify its global status. The AIIB officially opened at a ceremony on Saturday in Beijing, formalizing the emergence of a competitor to the Washington-led World Bank and strengthening China's influence over global development and finance. AIIB's inaugural president, the Chinese banker Jin Liqun, said Sunday that Asia still faces "severe connectivity gaps and significant infrastructure bottlenecks." The bank would welcome the United States and Japan, two economic powers that have declined invitations to join the organization, said Jin, who was previously a high-ranking official at both the World Bank and Japan-led Asian Development Bank."

A Wall Street Journal opinion piece comments that Taiwan's elections have returned the Democratic Progressive Party to power. Rolling over the incumbent Kuomintang (KMT) nationalists, the DPP won both the presidency and a legislative majority, giving it controls of both elective branches for the first time. President-elect Tsai Ing-wen didn't center her campaign on attacking the KMT policy of closer relations with China, focusing instead on Taiwan's lagging economy, but neither did she reject the bedrock DPP platform of independence from China. Her rhetoric, including her victory statement on Saturday, has been cautious. But her party's base knows what it wants. Inevitably, therefore, East Asia warning flags are up. Of course, the U.S. will also have presidential elections in 2016, and most of the Republican candidates are determined to replace the vacuum that exists where America's China policy should be. This may involve modifying or even jettisoning the ambiguous "one China" mantra, along with even more far-reaching initiatives to counter Beijing's rapidly accelerating political and military aggressiveness in the South and East China seas.