President of Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank honoured in Sydney

The President of the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB), Jin Liqun, was honored in Sydney on Monday evening, at a ceremony hosted by the Global Foundation.

Secretary General of the Global Foundation Steve Howard told Xinhua, the event was to recognise Liqun as an "outstanding Chinese internationalist" and to "honour the contribution he and the bank is making to peaceful and positive infrastructure development in Asia".

Prior to his role at the AIIB, Liqun had various roles with the Chinese Ministry of Finance and has previously served on the board of the World Bank in Washington.

In only its first year of operations, Liqun and the AIIB have committed over two billion U.S. dollars to developing infrastructure projects in developing nations.

Among the ventures are road corridors in Pakistan, electricity transmission systems in Bangladesh and urban redevelopment plans for Indonesian slums regions.

Also high on the agenda for the bank is renewable energy schemes for the people of Asia.

To recognise the progress made by Liqun, Steve Howard and the Global Foundation presented the former literary scholar with a very unique gift.

"During his university days, Liqun had studied Australian literature, including the most famous novelist in Australia, literary Nobel Peace Prize winner Patrick White, who wrote the book The Tree of Man," Howard said.

"This was a story about a pioneer going out in the wilderness on his own to establish progress."

"Liqun loved this idea about this Australian in the bush making his way, so he translated the first part of that book into Chinese and then it was later continued by others."

The organisation presented Liqun with the first ever edition of The Tree of Man, printed in New York in 1955.

"It was a very exciting moment for him and also a very exciting moment for us at the Global Foundation," Howard said. Enditem.