Washington appears to have softened its stance towards the new Beijing-led Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank, backing down from its earlier resistance and saying it is now ready to welcome the institution. But a prominent Chinese analyst says that despite the AIIB having been well received by the international community, including several US allies, it is still too early to tell if China has indeed scored a diplomatic victory. Shortly after a trip to Beijing, US Treasury Secretary Jack Lew said in San Francisco on Tuesday that the United States was "ready to welcome" and would embrace any new international development bank, provided it "complements" existing ones like the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund. While in Beijing, Lew had said he was encouraged Chinese leaders had "made clear that they aspire to meet high standards and welcome partnership". His remarks showed that the US - caught in a dilemma in the face of overwhelming support for the AIIB - was hoping to find ways to remedy its earlier opposition to the bank, analysts said. The AIIB has drawn at least 52 countries and regions, including some US allies, to apply to be its founding members. But Jin Canrong, deputy dean of Renmin University's School of International Studies, said it was too early to conclude that China had scored a diplomatic victory through the new bank, as its prospective founding members were still negotiating the charter on how the bank would be governed. "It is also too early to say that the AIIB will reshape the global financial order," Jin said, adding that a clearer picture would emerge by the year's end, when the targeted US$100 billion fund is expected to begin operating. Analysts say that with so many leading economies and US allies applying to join the AIIB, Washington has no choice but to accept the new bank. "What the US should do is to find ways to cooperate with the AIIB, either through the Asian Development Bank or the World Bank, hoping that China will follow the game's rules [the global financial order that Washington leads]," said Philip Yang, president of the Taiwan Association of International Relations. Yang said the incident reflected tension in Washington's policy to contain China. "It also reveals a serious setback for the US in its endeavour to adopt an effective strategy to help promote the development of Central Asian and Middle Eastern countries." Meanwhile, the US Congress was expected to pass its trade promotion authority legislation next month, an important step to speed up free-trade deals, Catherine Novelli, the US undersecretary of state for economic growth, energy and the environment, said yesterday. Yang said the law was urgently needed to facilitate negotiations such as that of the Trans-Pacific Partnership deal. Additional reporting by Agence France-Presse, Reuters
