The deadline for prospective founding members to submit their applications to China’s new Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB) came on March 31, leading a flurry of final applications from countries all over the world. When the dust settled, China moved on to selecting who would actually made the cut. Yesterday, the AIIB released its final, approved list of founding members (excluding Taiwan). With 57 countries signed up, the AIIB includes well over a quarter of the world’s nations. Even more interestingly, 16 of the world’s 20 largest economies are on board (with the U.S., Japan, Mexico, and Canada as the holdouts).
A few key points stand out here.
For one thing, Japan is nearly alone in Asia in not joining the AIIB. It’s the only major economy in all of Asia not to seek membership (Taiwan, as noted above, applied and was turned down, but will still seek to join later as an ordinary member). Looking at the other non-AIIB members in Asia – three are currently dealing with major uprisings (Iraq, Syria, and Yemen), one (Afghanistan) is undergoing its own fragile rebuilding process, one (Turkmenistan) avoids multilateral entanglements on principle, and one (North Korea) is extremely isolated internationally. Three of the other Asian non-applicants rank 116th (Papua New Guinea), 168th (Bhutan), and 174th (Timor-Leste) in terms of GDP, according to the World Bank. That’s not exactly great company for Japan. Even North Korea reportedly sought membership but was told it would need far more economic transparency to join.
The AIIB also has great representation in Europe. Nearly all of Western Europe (save Belgium and Ireland) officially signed up for the new bank. It’s a different story in Eastern Europe, where countries generally don’t have the excess capital to invest in an extra-regional bank (and thus Eastern European countries are not involved with the Asian Development Bank either). Meanwhile, the interest in AIIB from Western Europe marks a stark contrast between that region and North America. The U.S., Canada, and Mexico all declined to sign on, with Washington being particularly critical of the new project (including pressuring its friends and allies not to join).
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