The Obama administration, to its embarrassment, has been spurned by Western allies flocking to a China-led Asian development bank, defying White House pleas to stand back. In a surprise announcement last week, Britain said it would become the first Western nation to join the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank, a potential rival to the American-led World Bank.
On Tuesday, Germany, France and Italy announced that they would also join the bank, and Australia and South Korea are expected to follow.
Their decisions were proof that even Europe’s biggest economies, founders with the United States of the postwar global economic order, cannot resist the newest gold rush — into China, the world’s second-largest economy and a major export and investment market.
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