Liberal International Order with Chinese Characteristics? China and the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank

The rise of China raises fundamental questions about the future of the liberal international order (LIO). The launching of the China-centered Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB) provides a key test as its mission overlaps with those of the World Bank and the Asian Development Bank. This paper offers an assessment of the compatibility of the AIIB and the LIO against the background of competing theoretical expectations. We find that the AIIB reflects and embodies the tensions between the socializing effects of the LIO and China’s growing externalization of its own non-liberal, statist model of political economy. The AIIB appears to embrace and even reinforce certain bedrock features of the international order, including state sovereignty, multilateralism, and a strong role for international law and institutions. Nonetheless, there are important differences from the institutional status quo which provide insights into an emerging ‘liberal international order with Chinese characteristics’. First, the AIIB differs in distributional elements of the LIO such as the allocation of institutional control, social status, and social power, which all reflect a new era of Chinese leadership. Second, like China’s own international position, the AIIB occupies contested terrain that features strong continuities with existing development banks alongside support for state-centered development pathways and an incipient norm of international diversity, lending the international order Chinese characteristics.