Interview: Expert sees U.S. opposing China-proposed infrastructure bank a "mistake"

The United States has made a mistake in resisting joining the China-proposed Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB), said a leading U.S. expert.

Germany, France and Italy confirmed on Tuesday their intention to join the AIIB, following Britain's application last week to be a founding member of the 50-billion-U.S. dollar bank, dealing a major blow to Washington's efforts to discourage its close allies from joining the new international initiative.

The AIIB, expected to be formally established by the end of 2015, will be an international financial institution to fund infrastructure projects in Asia.

The United States has insisted that it is not reconsidering entry to the AIIB, although the application deadline is set for end of this month and Australia and the Republic of Korea are expected to rethink their decisions to stay out of the bank.

"Our policy right now is that we do not have a specific plan to join at this point," White House spokesman Josh Earnest said at a regular press briefing Tuesday, reiterating U.S. demand for high standards incorporated into the multilateral institution.

While there are concerns about the AIIB's standards and lending practices, "the United States has opposed the bank mainly because it's a Chinese initiative," said C. Fred Bergsten, senior fellow and director emeritus at the Washington-based Peterson Institute for International Economics, adding "It's not something the United States will play a major role even if it joins."

But the European countries "have concluded that the best way to address those questions is joining the bank, working on these topics with China and other Asia members, and trying to achieve international best practices," Bergsten said in an interview with Xinhua.

"I think they're right to do so," said the former U.S. Treasury official. "The European countries realize that the AIIB will be a very serious international institution. It will contribute to the major needs for much more infrastructure investments in Asia. It will therefore contribute to a strong world economy."

Bergsten said the AIIB does show China's willingness to excise the leadership, and place significant resources on international efforts. It was a mistake for the United States to oppose such initiative, as "the United States has been urging China for many years to take more leadership role in the world economy and be a responsible stakeholder."

According to Bergsten, there are always tensions between the incumbent economic power and the new rising power, but there are also ways in which both sides can get together to "forge a real new international economic system." There will have to be institutional reforms to accommodate the rising China and other emerging markets and that also requires changing mindset for the United States to accept it.

Bergsten blamed the U.S. government for failing for four years to work with the Congress to ratify the 2010 governance and quota reforms of the International Monetary Fund (IMF), which will call for a 6 percent shift in quota share to emerging economies and lift China to the third largest shareholder.

The AIIB will not become a major issue in terms of relations between U.S. and its close allies, he said. However, it indicates that "the United States does not have quite much influence with some of its allies as it did in the past periods."

Echoing his view, Elizabeth Economy, senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, said "there is no sense expending further political capital trying to persuade regional and other actors not to join the bank. It is a small-potato issue that is making the United States look weak at a time when U.S. influence in the region is otherwise quite strong."

Bergsten believed the United States and Japan will eventually join the AIIB, as "we're likely to see the evolution of regional arrangements which will eventually include China and United States and Japan" on the trade policy front, citing the fact that the APEC members agreed to start a joint strategic study on the Free Trade Area of the Asia-Pacific (FTAAP) last November.

"No regional arrangements are really going to be successful unless they include those three powers. That's why I feel the same way about the AIIB. I think eventually both the Japan and United States will join under the Chinese leadership," he said.

Twenty-one countries including China, India and Singapore signed a Memorandum of Understanding last October in Beijing on creating the AIIB. China's Finance Minister Lou Jiwei said on March 6 that 27 countries had applied to join as founding members.

While the application deadline is March 31, "the door will always be open for interested countries," Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Hong Lei said of the AIIB Wednesday. He noted that the bank would benefit developing Asian countries that lack infrastructure funds and would adopt the best practices of other multilateral development banks. Endite