Drs Matteo Dian and Silvia Menegazzi give a talk on the AIIB at the International Political Economy of East Asia Seminar This presentation will analyse the strategy that led China to establish the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB) and its likely consequences for the regional and global economic order. The creation of the AIIB embodies a considerable shift for the Chinese approach to regional and global governance, constituted by an increasing will to promote a transition from a 'Western-led governance' to a more inclusive 'East-West co -governance'.

Is the AIIB initiative just an instrument created to sustain China’s economic prosperity and Xi Jinping’s call for a 'Chinese Dream'? Is it a consequence of China's growing frustration with the Bretton Woods' architecture? Or, is it rather a first stepping stone towards a new China-centered financial and economic order? Does this entail a relevant threat to the world's economic order and its institutions? Or is it more simply a symptom of the increasing normative and institutional plurality of the current international order?

In this light, the seminar will scrutinize Beijing's new multilateral project taking into account China's growing regional role, and in particular, it’s renewed centrality in the East Asian region. In the course of the seminar, particular attention will be devoted to the analysis of the challenges and priorities as discussed by Chinese scholars, policy analysts and think tank experts.