Chinese Surprised by Asian Development Bank Support

Published on Author crastoa16

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Recently, there has been a rush of applications to join China’s new Asian development bank – the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank. The deadline is this week to apply and many of these last -minute applications are from countries that China doesn’t have the best relations with. For example, Taiwan is one of the countries to join in at the end. This is surprising given the nature of Chinese – Taiwanese politics. Taiwan is still considered to be a breakaway territory of China. Norway is another example of a nation with somewhat strained ties with China and yet decided to join. Jin Canrong, a professor of international relations at Renmin University in Beijing said “Such wide and warm support was unexpected.”

The United States has criticized this new bank as “a deliberate effort to undercut the World Bank.” The United States is afraid that this bank, under Chinese leadership, will make rash decisions.  This criticism on behalf of the U.S. has created global tensions and the taking of sides. Japan is the only major Asian ally still on the side of the United States after the application deadline had passes. Allies like South Korea and Australia were among the ones who ended up changing their minds on the matter and ended up joining.

This seems to be one more thing that the U.S. and China cannot agree on. This public disagreement and taking of sides is important to the balance of world politics. The decision of other U.S. allies in the region is also important. What does this say about the relationships the U.S. has in the region if they have decided to side with China on this matter?

 

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2 Responses to Chinese Surprised by Asian Development Bank Support

  2. Both the creation of this bank and the US’ opposition to this bank can be seen as political moves rather focused on developing third-world countries. Looking back at history, we can see that the World Bank was created by the US and UK expand their sphere of influence. Similarly, now that China has a war chest of foreign reserves, it plans to use it to expand its global pull.