BRITAIN’S recent decision to join the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB) as a founder member has led to a kind of stampede by other allies of the United States in Europe such as Germany, France and Italy to follow suit.
So did two other important Asia-Pacific allies, Australia and South Korea. The only other major US ally in Asia which did not was Japan.
What is striking is that these allies went against the express wishes of the US which apparently saw the AIIB as a potential challenge to the domination of the international financial architecture by the US-controlled World Bank and the International Monetary Fund.
Particularly stunning is the British decision. According to senior fellow at the Department of Politics and International Studies at Britain’s Cambridge University Martin Jacques, in this year’s Boao Forum, this is the first time since Breton Woods in the 1940s, except for one occasion when Britain refused a US request to send troops to Vietnam, that Britain had ever said no to the US so publicly!
Jacques exaggerates somewhat as he should have begun with 1956 as the year when Britain abandoned an independent foreign policy, as a result of its misbegotten adventure in Suez, and became a faithful junior partner to the US.
Still, it is no less remarkable, even beginning with 1956, for it took about six decades before a clear British nay to the US came about.
Many saw the rush to join the AIIB as signifying the beginning of a new international financial order and the decline of US dollar hegemony, with China deemed to be the new or most influential nation.
Some, however, saw Chinese weakness rather than strength in this spectacle.
London’s Financial Times argued that resorting to a multi-lateral institution to exercise influence suggests weakness as China will be less able to get its own way, not to mention possible badgering from non-governmental organisations in future deliberations of the AIIB, than if it could do so by bilateral means.
It remains to be seen if a new financial order will eventuate. I will however make a few points about this development.
One is that it has shown in a dramatic way the global reach of Chinese economic strength, especially in the financial arena.
While it is true that China is already an economic force in other parts of the globe such as in the continents of Africa and South America, not to mention Asia and Australia, this is probably the first time that a major European nation has made an economic decision with obvious political implications favourable to the Chinese.
Someone defined a superpower as a nation or state that can project dominating power and influence in the globe, sometimes in one region or more, and that has the potential to attain global hegemony.
In this respect we can consider China an economic superpower.
Of relevance to our understanding of Chinese strength is the reason behind the British decision.
Britain in the past year or two has evinced a more positive attitude towards China.
According to an analysis in the Internet magazine, Counterpunch, the recent British economic recovery has been mainly based on financial flows to property and infrastructural projects in London and the south of England, and the prosperity of the City of London.
And the city of London is what keeps Britain from becoming a third-tier economy.
This is so important that David Cameron and the Conservatives could conceive of Britain leaving the European Union if the EU were to mess with the running of the City by imposing regulations.
A lot of the money recently has come from China and Britain is very keen to be involved in the offshore trading of the Chinese renminbi.
Thus, there is every prospect of Britain getting more action from a China, with foreign reserves of around US$4tril (RM14.68tril), looking for more ways to use the renminbi.
Joining the AIIB in such a fashion, not only brings with it the prospect of possibly getting a leg up in future AIIB projects, but also gains Chinese goodwill. But it is important not to exaggerate Chinese strength. It is a superpower only in the economic arena, and not in other spheres such as the military and political.
Militarily, the US far exceeds China in the amount of money spent and in technological sophistication. Politically, what China can at present offer cannot match the global impact of values associated with the US such as democracy and human rights.
Even in the economic sphere, the Chinese Gross Domestic Product is only equal in size to the US in purchasing power terms, and not in dollar terms where the US GDP is more than one and the half times that of China.
In per capita terms, US GDP is at least four times more. And the US is still far more advanced in the sophistication of its financial market and industrial structures.
The significance of this AIIB development is not a demonstration of raw Chinese economic power.
It is unlikely to do away with the WB or the IMF.
It is really another symptom, this time in Europe and in the financial arena, of the global centre of gravity shifting to Asia.
> Dr Lee Poh Ping is a Senior Research Fellow at the Institute of China Studies in the University of Malaya. The views expressed here are entirely the writer’s own.
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