Chinese President Xi Jinping addresses the opening ceremony of the fifth annual meeting of the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank via video link in Beijing, capital of China, on July 28, 2020.
Xinhua News Agency | fake pictures
Chinese President Xi Jinping on Tuesday affirmed his country’s commitment to work with others, while pressing to consolidate the role of the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank in the global economic governance system.
“Let’s stay open and inclusive and make AIIB a new paradigm of multilateral cooperation,” Xi said Tuesday at the opening ceremony of the annual meeting of the Chinese development bank, which was held this year due to the coronavirus pandemic.
Xi asked the bank to “become a new platform that promotes the development of all its members and facilitates the construction of a community with a shared future for humanity.”
AIIB has provided nearly $ 20 billion in infrastructure investment to its members since its launch in 2016, Xi said. Seen as a rival to the World Bank led by the United States and the Asian Development Bank led by Japan, AIIB currently has 102 members from Asia, Europe, Africa and the Americas.
“Under the principle of broad consultation, joint contribution and shared benefits, AIIB needs to respond to adjustments and changes in the global economic landscape and involve more development partners in cooperation,” said Xi in Beijing at the start of the event. two days. .
“It must provide public goods for our region and beyond, boost regional economic integration, and help make economic globalization more open, inclusive, balanced, and beneficial to all,” Xi said, according to an official bank translation.
AIIB has established a Covid-19 crisis recovery facility to help its members deal with the consequences of the global pandemic. The line of credit provides between $ 5 billion and $ 10 billion in financing.
The Chinese leader’s words came as the United States continues to withdraw from its globalization efforts under the administration of President Donald Trump. It also occurs when the world’s two largest economies face a myriad of problems from trade to technology, amid tensions over the origins of the coronavirus as well as rivalry in the South China Sea.
AIIB President Jin Liqun said on Wednesday that “due to some of the problems that occurred in globalization, there is a backlash.”
However, he added: “The important thing is not to discard globalization or multilateralism. The important thing is to solve the problems created in the course of the multilateral development of the globalized economy.”
“We need to solve the problems, but we must not go against the globalized economy or global integration,” Jin told CNBC’s “Squawk Box”.
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