The Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank’s first president defends China’s role as ‘responsible stakeholder’ in a less multilateral world

When China wanted to set up its answer to the World Bank, it picked Jin Liqun—a veteran financier with experience at the World Bank, the Asian Development Bank, China’s ministry of finance and the China Investment Corporation, the country’s sovereign wealth fund—to design it. Since 2014, Jin has been the force behind the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank, including a decade as its first president, starting in 2016. 

Jin’s decade-long tenure comes to an end on January 16, when he will hand over the president’s chair to Zou Jiayi, a former vice minister of finance. When Jin took over the AIIB ten years ago, the world was still mostly on a path to further globalization and economic integration, and the U.S. and China were competitors, not rivals. The world is different now: Protectionism is back, countries are ditching multilateralism, and the U.S. and China are at loggerheads. 

The AIIB has largely managed to keep its over-100 members, which includes many countries that are either close allies to the U.S.—like Germany, France and the U.K.—or have longstanding tensions with Beijing, like India and the Philippines.

But can the AIIB—which boasts China as its largest shareholder, and is closely tied to Beijing’s drive to be seen as a “responsible stakeholder”—remain neutral in a more polarized international environment? And can multilateralism survive with an “America First” administration in Washington?

After his decades working for multilat...