AIIB President Sees Myanmar's membership in the AIIB as the country's ticket to a developed economy. The AIIB is promoting China's One Belt One Road Initiative in Myanmar and AIIB President, Jin Liquin, believes this will benefit not only Myanmar, but also the neighboring countries. Myanmar's Mingyan project is a part of a 300 million USD budget that the AIIB approved in September.
Development Banks in Asia need to Cooperate and Coordinate
Last Friday, a seminar under the title of “Deepening Asian Economic and Financial Cooperation, Promoting Regional Integrated Development” was hosted by China's Ministry of Finance. Very salient questions concerning the future of Asia's future development were posed, however, the most important discussions were brought up concerning the cooperation and coordination of banks in order to address Asia's infrastructure gap. The Asian region is very vibrant with a lot of potential, however, the infrastructure is several behind. Therefore, more coordination between multilateral development banks and lending institutions in the private sector was encouraged in order to effectively address narrowing this infrastructure gap. The AIIB was brought up ini this seminar and it was announced that the new bank intends on financing additional projects by the end of 2016.
Global Governance
Over 300 officials, scholars, and business leaders met at Wenzhou City for the 2016 Charhar Forum on Public Diplomacy and Wenzhou Public Diplomacy Forum. This forum is in part organized by the Charhar Institute, a think tank on China's international relations and foreign policy. The forum focused on brainstorming ideas on how China's wisdom can help contribute to global governance. Former vice foreign minister He Yafei believes that China should provide new initiatives similar to the AIIB and the BRICS to "advocate democracy in international relations and explore new models for common development and win-win situations,"
Politics of Investment
China's recent venture into the Philippines represents a success in connecting transport lines from China and supporting Chinese infrastructure firms. The Silk Road / One Belt One Road shows that China is remaking itself the center of world trade. The central theme of China's economic strategy is loans for infrastructure development and that Chinese firms be contracted for projects. The ADB believes that the AIIB can help meet the shortfall in loans available internationally, $8 trillion in investment between 2012 and 2020.