Economic–Security Nexus in the AIIB: China's Quest for Security through Eurasian Connectivity

Abstract

The Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB) is mainly considered as a commercialconnectivity and sustainability-oriented infrastructure development bank, but there are also international security dimensions to the Bank. China's geo-strategic and security motivations are said to be behind its spearheading of the AIIB. This essay highlights that China's national and international security calculations have evolved in the period after the Bank's opening. In the initial phase of the AIIB's formation, 2013-2017, the Bank's creation was part of Beijing's pursuit of a more outwardly ambitious and bold national/international security agenda of new institutionbuilding, looking to reshape the system of global governance. But since 2017, China's leadership has responded to sustained international pushback against its ambitious agenda, especially but not exclusively from the United States, and it has refocused its national security priorities onto protecting national economic growth, national sovereignty and regime preservation. Beijing has supported moves to put some distance between the AIIB from the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), and Chinese strategists have shifted to seeing the AIIB as helpful for mitigating an economic downturn across Eurasia, and preserving China's continuing growth, and regime survival in what they perceive as a period of external threat.

Infrastructures of globalisation. Shifts in global order and Europe’s strategic choices

“…Empirically, we are focussing on infrastructural strategies of the EU. So far, this subject has been sidelined by analyses of US and Chinese infrastructure policy, in particular Beijing’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) (Andornino, 2019; Benabdallah, 2019; Zhou and Esteban, 2018). In the academic debate, the EU usually appears as a ‘reactive’ infrastructure policy actor – with occasional exceptions (Meunier and Nicolaidis, 2019).…”

Rhetorical coercion, institutional legitimacy and the creation of the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank

“…Existing AIIB scholarship focuses on the multiplicity of considerations that motivated China to create the bank (Andornino, 2019; Chen & Liu, 2018; Ren, 2016; Wilson, 2019; Yang, 2016) and the potential implications the China‐led MDB has for Western‐dominated IFIs and global economic governance at large (Chin, 2016; Hameiri & Jones, 2018; Kahler, 2017; Kawai, 2015; Lipscy, 2015; Qian et al, 2023; Reisen, 2015; Stephen & Skidmore, 2019; Wang, 2017). In comparison, much less attention has been paid to the factors that may have contributed to the failure of the United States (and the success of China) in the contest over the AIIB.…”

Multilateral Development Banks as Agents of Connectivity: the Asian Development Bank (ADB) and the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB)

“…This is exemplified by the bank’s approval of the first project, which only took 6 months after the start of its operations [ 40 ]. Indeed, it has been argued that the Chinese version of connectivity represents infrastructure built with lower costs, but at a quicker pace [ 1 : 607].…”