China’s Approach to Multilateralism – The Case of the AIIB
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Abstract
China’s current ‘One Belt One Road’ initiative and the related establishment of a new multilateral development bank, the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB), lead to the assumption of a new trend within China’s approach to multilateralism. While in the past China was a rule taker in multilateral processes, it appears that through these new developments and in particular through the China-led AIIB, it has increasingly turned to a rule maker in the multilateral sphere. Considering China’s role in its regional integration policy, this change towards a regional multilateralism under Chinese dominance is crucial because it also might have significant impacts on future developments of Asian regionalism. This paper presents an analysis of the current change in China’s approach to multilateralism by examining the case of the AIIB. The preliminary results of the research show that in some cases the AIIB enables China to expand its influence and power regionally as well as globally. However, it has also been found that external channels are influencing and even restricting China’s dominance in the AIIB.
Read the fourth Mapping China Working Paper of 2017 here: Working Paper Series 2017 4