India and America: a certain ambivalence  – Asia Times

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America reaches us everywhere: in our villages by the mountains, in our towns by the sea, in our cities by the desert. America shapes and distorts, regenerates and ruins. America is hope and America is anxiety.  

My first memorable encounter with American power was a story my father told me in the mid-1980s in our village in the mountains of Kashmir. Our few acres of rice fields would have a rich harvest in the autumn. After school, I would carry samovars of tea for the workers harvesting and threshing the grain. My father, an energetic civil servant in his mid-thirties, would join us after work.  

We would drink tea, and he would tell me stories. One of those afternoons, my father spoke of the bleak years of his adolescence in the 1960s, when hunger stalked not just our little villages, not just India and Pakistan but all of Asia. He was born in the early fifties as Asia and Africa were winning back their freedom from European empires, whose extractive colonialism had squeezed the colonies of almost everything valuable.  

Father spoke of an American man. A scientist who traveled to India in the early 1960s, worked with Indian scientists, and introduced high-yielding crop varieties that multiplied agricultural yields and significantly helped reduce global hunger.  

“It was the Green Revolution,” father said. “His name is Norman Borlaug.” 

“Norman Borlaug.” I repeated. 

Norman Borlaug, who was born on a farm in Iowa, who eventually won a Nobel Peace Prize in 1970 for his singular contribution to significantly reducing hunger in Asia and Latin America, defined the best of America for me. 

I never forgot his name. 

India has grappled with American power—through its rise and rise and its relative decline, through its benevolence and its cruelty—with a range of responses rooted in experiences of colonialism and its own visions of economic and political power: from postcolonial righteous indignation to reluctant supplication to defiant Soviet embrace to today’s amoral nationalism.  

On an October evening in 1949, General Dwight D Eisenhower, who served as the president of Columbia University after leading the Allied forces to victory in World War II, conferred the degree of Doctor of Laws upon Jawaharlal Nehru, the first prime minister of India, at the Low Memorial Library.

The Cold War was on: George Kennan’s argument for “containment of Russian expansive tendencies” had shaped American policy; the Truman Doctrine and the Marshall Plan were already in place; the Berlin blockade was ongoing; and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization was five months old. 

Americans wanted India to “get on the democratic side immediately,” as Henry F. Grady, the first American ambassador to India, put it to Prime Minister Nehru in December 1947. Nehru had read widely about America—from Upton Sinclair to Henry David Thoreau to Reinhold Niebuhr—and admired former President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s support for Indian independence.

But the Indian leader saw America representing “a reactionary policy” in world affairs and was certain that India would not align with a particular nation or group of nations. 

With Eisenhower and Arthur Hays Sulzberger, publisher of The New York Times, in his audience, Nehru roasted American Cold War doctrines. “The very process of marshalling of the world into two hostile camps precipitates the conflict which it sought to avoid,” he told his hosts. His fundamental intellectual concerns were radically different.

He spoke of three grave dangers to global peace and progress: colonialism, white supremacy, and hunger. European colonial powers were still delaying decolonization in parts of Asia and most of Africa; American reluctance to push their European allies disappointed him. “It is clear that all vestiges of imperialism and colonialism will have to disappear.” 

The America Nehru spoke to was still Jim Crow America and the civil rights movement was still years away. “Secondly, there is the problem of race relations,” Nehru told his hosts. Indian nationalist leaders and Black civil rights leaders in America—Lala Lajpat Rai, Gandhi, Nehru, Marcus Garvey, W E B Du Bois—had been in conversation for years and saw white supremacy as a defining factor in British colonialism in India and in Jim Crow in America.

“The West has too often despised the Asian and the African and still, in many places, denies them not only equality of rights but even common humanity and kindliness,” Nehru said.

Legacies of war, colonialism, and political turmoil had exacerbated hunger across Asia and Africa. India was facing a shortage of wheat and rice and ensuring food security was an urgent concern for Nehru. “The third reason for war and revolution is misery and want,” he told his hosts. “If we offer no remedy, then other cries and slogans make an appeal to the minds of the people.” 

The East Coast intellectuals were impressed, the Truman administration was irritated, and Nehru was convinced India should “align somewhat” with the United States but not be subservient. The essence of India’s view of America is distilled in a note Nehru wrote to his colleagues who were finalizing a commercial treaty with the United States.

“The safest policy,” he wrote, “appears to be friendly to America, to give them fair terms, to invite their help on such terms, and at the same time not to tie ourselves up too much with their world or their economic policy.” 

That stance of being friendly and open to all the American help one needs while refusing formal military or economic alliances and maintaining autonomy to pursue relationships with other powers to strengthen India’s national interests has survived with minor variations in form and tone over the decades. 

If foreign policy is the face a nation wears to the world, as Arthur Schlesinger, Jr. wrote, American power in the Cold War and Indian responses to that colossal destructive and regenerative force were a series of scowls and smiles, glares and grins, wails and shrugs. Cycles of annoyance and accommodation, hostility and warmth defined the relations between India and the United States during the Cold War. 

The first significant illustration of Nehru’s policy of neutrality was the Korean War between 1950 and 1953. Fearful of the war expanding in Asia but also aware of the opportunity to act as “a counterbalancing force,” in a bipolar world by uniting the Third World and the Commonwealth countries, Nehru’s India cooperated, bargained, and battled with the United States throughout the war at the United Nations. India’s hectic diplomacy and mediation between the Americans, the Russians, and the Chinese to find a compromise to end the war were thwarted at various stages by the colliding powers.

Eventually, after Stalin’s death in March 1953, as the warring parties were ready for a ceasefire, a vigorous Indian effort united the Third World and Commonwealth countries behind a UN resolution, forced reluctant Americans to support a compromise on the repatriation of 20,000 prisoners of war, and paved the path to the signing of the Korean armistice. The historian Richard Barnes writes that the experience led Nehru to place “his allegiance squarely” with the Third World. 

After the war, the patrician voice of Jawaharlal Nehru called for Asian and African solidarity, decolonization, and Cold War neutrality. He was a prominent player in the landmark Bandung Conference in Indonesia in 1955, which eventually led to the establishment of the Non-Aligned Movement in 1961, along with other flawed giants of his era: Gamel Abdel Nasser of Egypt, Josef Broz Tito of Yugoslavia, Kwame Nkrumah of Ghana, and Sukarno of Indonesia. 

But the promise of Asian solidarity was diminished by the Chinese invasion of India in 1962. Although India’s defeat was crushing, the country encountered two assuring and friendly faces of America power in John F Kennedy and John Kenneth Galbraith, his ambassador to India, who ensured US military support for India and brought warmth to Indian views of America. A year later, in 1963, Norman Borlaug arrived in India, testing his high-yielding crop varieties, collaborating with Indian scientists, and helping India achieve self-sufficiency in a decade. 

Two years after the war with China, in 1964, a broken Nehru died. India was a lesser country without him and everyone who followed him was dwarfed by his shadow. But the mistakes of great men also exact a great price: Nehru’s intransigence and failure to allow a just resolution to the Kashmir dispute contributed to decades of violence, militarization, and great suffering for the people of Kashmir, and the furies unleashed by the battles for my home distorted the polities of India and Pakistan. 

American power and its manifestations in Asia—military aid, alliances, food assistance, deployment of its overwhelming force—remained tied to the fundamental goal of maintaining American supremacy by containing Soviet power and influence. A confluence of values was largely ignored at the altar of strategic interests. As Nehru once remarked in the context of Kashmir, “We cannot afford to lose,” he told a visitor. “Till things improve, democracy and morality can wait.” 

America’s need for an ally on the eastern flank of the Soviet Union willing to offer bases from where American jets could strike inside the Red Imperium was met by Pakistan, which also joined the Southeast Asia Treaty Organization and the Central Treaty Organization. America reciprocated by supplying weapons, and Pakistani soldiers drove American Patton tanks across the border into Indian territory when the intimate enemies fought another war over Kashmir in 1965. 

Six months after that war, when Lal Bahadur Shastri, her father’s successor, died of a heart attack in Tashkent after signing a peace agreement with Pakistan, Indira Gandhi, the 49-year-old daughter of Nehru, became prime minister in January 1966. The monsoon had failed that year and she needed American wheat to save millions from starvation. President Lyndon Johnson was already embroiled in the Vietnam War when Mrs. Gandhi traveled to the United States to meet him in the spring of 1966.

A year earlier, India’s president, S Radhakrishnan, a philosopher who had served as Nehru’s ambassador to the Soviet Union, proposed a peace plan for Vietnam calling for cessation of hostilities. Johnson wasn’t pleased. As the historian Ramachandra Guha recounts, India was receiving 15 million tons of American wheat under a public loan scheme from the United States in 1965 and 1966. And while Johnson offered Mrs. Gandhi a warm reception, the American president decided to “keep his supplicants on a tight leash.” 

On her return from Washington, Indira Gandhi faced an economic and political crisis at home. The wily old bosses of the Congress Party were trying to be the real power behind the throne. To fight the power brokers, Indira had surrounded herself with a group of brilliant mandarins who preferred the Soviet Union over the United States. A turn toward rousing socialist rhetoric in a very poor country would endear her to the masses. 

In the summer of 1966, the Indian government condemned the bombing of Hanoi and Haiphong. Mrs. Gandhi traveled to Moscow, where she signed a joint statement with Soviet Premier Alexei Kosygin condemning the imperial aggression in Vietnam and calling for an “immediate and unconditional” end to the bombings of Hanoi and Haiphong.

A furious Lyndon Johnson ordered that the monthly food shipments to India not be sent without his personal authorization, which he relished in delaying. Inder Malhotra, an Indian journalist, recalled decades later, “India literally almost lived from ‘ship to mouth’ and those of us who lived through that era swallowed a measure of humiliation with every morsel of American food.”  

The war in Vietnam found its way into Satyajit Ray’s 1970 film Pratidwandi, or The Adversary, which captures the upheaval and the despair of the time in India, through a medical school dropout’s search of an unattainable job. In a job interview, an aging suit asks the protagonist to name the most outstanding and significant event of the last decade, and they spar over their choices: the moon landing versus the Vietnam War. The candidate doesn’t find the moon landing surprising or unpredictable considering the advances in space technology. 

“Do you think the war in Vietnam was unpredictable?” the suit demands. 

“Not the war itself. But what it has revealed about the Vietnamese people, about their extraordinary power of resistance. Ordinary people. Peasants,” the candidate replies.  

“And no one knew they had it in them. And this is not a matter of technology. . . . It is just plain, human courage and it takes your breath away.” 

The closer American power, wars, and great power gambits came to Indian shores the more American prestige declined in India. In the summer of 1969, as the war escalated in Vietnam and anti-war protests raged across the country, President Richard Nixon and his Secretary of State Henry Kissinger were working on a rapprochement with the People’s Republic of China to change the balance of power against the Soviet Union.

General Yahya Khan, the military dictator of Pakistan, who had warm relations with both, became the secret channel between Nixon and the Communist China leadership. 

In December 1970, Pakistan, whose Eastern and Western wings uneasily flanked India, held its national election. Sheikh Mujibur Rahman’s Awami League, which represented the more populous Bengali-speaking East Pakistan, won.

Yahya Khan and the West Pakistani elite, dominated by the Punjabis, which looked down on the Bengalis, refused to allow Rahman form the government. Protests erupted in Dhaka and Yahya Khan’s military responded with genocidal violence, killing hundreds of thousands Bengalis and forcing ten million refugees into India. 

In April 1971, Arthur Blood, an American diplomat in Dhaka, wrote “The Blood Telegram,” to Washington, a devastating plea for action that described the horrors being inflicted by the Pakistani military. Nixon ignored it. Yahya Khan’s secret diplomacy with the Chinese leadership had landed Nixon the coveted invitation to visit the People’s Republic.

American grand strategy was always more important than brown lives in the Third World. Nixon did nothing to restrain Yahya Khan. Public opinion in America wasn’t a concern for Nixon, who was certain of American indifference toward “just a bunch of brown goddamn Moslems.” 

Three million people were killed in East Pakistan. “To condemn these violations publicly would have destroyed the Pakistani channel, which would be needed for months to complete the opening to China,” Kissinger told The Atlantic in an interview. India, which had been secretly training and arming Bengali insurgents, briskly accelerated ongoing conversations with Moscow and signed a military pact with the Soviet Union in August 1970. Any remaining pretense of nonalignment was over. 

Mrs. Gandhi met with Nixon and Kissinger at the White House, a visit that achieved little in preventing a war between India and Pakistan. Gary H Bass, a Princeton historian, analyzed declassified audio conversations between Nixon and Kissinger, which provided a stunning record of their racist and sexist vocabulary that he believes influenced foreign policy. Among the abusive epithets Kissinger and Nixon used for Mrs. Gandhi and Indians: unattractive, pathetic, repulsive, a scavenging people, masters at subtle flattery. 

“After a short war in December, India defeated Pakistan, and helped create the independent state of Bangladesh. Two memories from that time profoundly shaped India’s attitudes toward America: Nixon dispatching the nuclear-armed USS Enterprise to the Indian Ocean; the Soviet Union dispatching naval vessels and submarines to Indian waters in solidarity.” 

The lure of America never ceases to diminish despite the destruction America inflicts and heaps upon the world. The war in Vietnam coincided with the liberalization of American immigration laws in 1965, which removed restrictive national origin quotas for Asia and allowed Asian students, skilled workers, and professionals to migrate to the United States.

An Indian engineering student from Lucknow, in northern India, who studied and worked in America in the 1970s recalled watching a film about the 1964 New York World’s Fair at a United States Information Service outpost in his city: “I was dazzled by what I saw in the film since it was a showcase of all the latest gadgets of modern life.” The Indian diaspora in America grew at an incredibly brisk pace: from 12,000 in 1960 to 450,000 in 1990. 

The long estrangement between India and the United States continued, largely hovering around India’s nuclear ambitions. India conducted its first nuclear test in 1974. Four years later, in 1978, President Jimmy Carter signed the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, which demanded inspections of nuclear facilities of countries not included in the treaty.

India, which was not a signatory, refused. America stopped nuclear assistance to India’s nuclear power plants, a move it reversed after Mrs. Gandhi traveled to Washington in 1982. India Today, the leading Indian magazine of the time, christened Mrs. Gandhi’s visit “Operation Defrost,” and described it with the Indian love of hyperbole as a “spectacular voyage” in which Mrs. Gandhi “dazzled America,” as no other world leader had in recent memory. 

Two assassinations bookended Indian polity between the early eighties and the early nineties: Indira Gandhi’s assassination by her Sikh bodyguards in 1984 after she ordered Indian troops to attack the Golden Temple, the holiest Sikh shrine, to flush out Sikh militants sheltering there; and the 1991 assassination of Rajiv Gandhi, her younger son, by Sri Lankan Tamil Tigers, avenging his botched military intervention in Sri Lanka.

A series of cynical political plays by Mrs. Gandhi and her son had intensified religious strife across the country and contributed to the eruption of an armed insurgency in Kashmir in the winter of 1989–90. Economic policies guiding India’s mixed economy, which combined the “worst aspects of socialism and capitalism,” had brought the economy to the brink of collapse by the summer of 1991. 

It was a time of profound global transformation with the reunification of Germany, the fall of communist dictatorships in Eastern Europe, and the Soviet Union on the verge of dissolution. India faced a moment of reckoning: Its foreign debt had risen to around $72 billion and foreign exchange reserves had collapsed to less than the sum required to finance imports for two weeks.

Desperate, India pawned off its gold on banks in Europe and Japan to raise funds. In June 1991, P. V. Narasimha Rao, a Congress Party leader who had served as Rajiv Gandhi’s foreign minister, took office as prime minister and appointed Manmohan Singh, a Cambridge economist, as finance minister. 

In the summer of 1991, Manmohan Singh dismantled the controlled economy of India by ending the Byzantine regulatory regime that had long stifled industry and opening up the country to foreign investment, removing currency controls, lowering import tariffs, devaluing the rupee, reducing taxes, and scrapping industrial licensing.

In a July 1991 speech to the Indian parliament, Singh, wearing a blue turban and a white sherwani, spoke with controlled passion, and called for a second industrial revolution and a second agricultural revolution. He quoted Victor Hugo: “No power on earth can stop an idea whose time has come. I suggest to this august House that the emergence of India as a major economic power in the world happens to be one such idea.” 

In the following decade, Singh’s reforms grew the economy rapidly, producing a new middle class with disposable incomes. In the mid- and late 1990s, I was a student at a public university in a small town a couple of hours from Delhi. Despite our genteel poverty, the sense of possibility and transformation was palpable. The United States in its unipolar moment, and the icons of American capitalism and technology, were quickly replacing the old heroes of socialist India. 

Our conversations at university didn’t center on Nasser, Sukarno, or Nkrumah but on Bill Gates and Sabeer Bhatia, who co-founded Hotmail. Cyber cafes, powered by dial-up Internet, were our gateways to American universities. When McDonald’s came to India, without beef but with a vegetarian menu, the waiting lines recalled religious festivals.

The newspapers and magazines listed the shocking salaries the graduates of elite management and computer sciences schools were offered. Azim Premji, Shiv Nadar, Narayana Murthy, and F. C. Kohli, the pioneers of India’s infotech revolution, the billionaire makers of the New India, became names that evoked the same reverence once reserved for the Nehrus and the Gandhis. 

Indian society was enthralled by America and American attitudes to consumerism, capitalism, and individual freedoms. I found work as a reporter for a website in Delhi at the turn of the millennium. Globalization was the vibe. American corporations were outsourcing service jobs by the thousands to India.

The rise of the multibillion outsourcing industry in India even captured the attention of Susan Sontag, who spoke about young Indians acquiring mastery of English and inventing American personas in their call center jobs. “To pull this off, they have to be plausibly American to themselves. They have been assigned American names and little biographies of their American identities,” Sontag said. 

Mujahid, my flatmate, was one of those young Indians. He trained for months to erase traces of Tamil in his English and emerged with a middle-American accent. He taught me American slang and idioms and spoke relentlessly about American sitcoms and the Super Bowl. He would leave for work in the evenings to work on Central Standard Time and pass as an American through the night on calls with customers in Chicago and Milwaukee. His American name was Adam Smith. 

The New India evoked breathless comparisons to the Roaring Twenties. Yet a million mutinies exacting terrible human costs persisted in India along with its euphoric transformation: a savage war still raged in Kashmir; insurgencies flourished in the northeastern states bordering Myanmar and China; Maoist rebels fought Indian forces across the forests of central India; crushing loans and the failure to increase agricultural productivity had pushed thousands of farmers to suicide; the quality of most educational institutions remained bleak; the state of the health care, legal, and policing systems remained terrifying. 

The humiliation of waiting for American wheat and the righteous activism that fought against American hegemony were distant memories when I moved to New York for graduate school in the mid-2000s. India was a rising power, a would-be great power.

“The world—and particularly the United States—is courting India as it never has before,” Fareed Zakaria wrote in Newsweek. “Fascinated by the new growth story, perhaps wary of Asia’s Chinese superpower, searching to hedge some bets, the world has woken up to India’s potential.”

He recalled being at the World Economic Forum in Davos where he witnessed India dominate the conversation and Klaus Schwab dressed in “a colorful Indian turban and shawl, nibbled on chicken tikka and talked up the country’s prospects with Michael Dell.” 

In New York, I encountered a lot of hand-wringing about the American wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, about the scandals of Abu Ghraib and Bagram and the languages of torture and rendition. American colleagues were curious how India saw the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. The truth is that they simply didn’t incite the fury and advocacy that the Korean and Vietnam wars did in India. 

The Times of India, the highest-selling English newspaper in the country, did publish a cartoon strip called “Dubyaman,” which lampooned George Bush. And India, witnessing the rise of Hindu nationalism in parallel with economic liberalization, had a coalition government led by the Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party that refused an American request for 17,000 Indian soldiers to be deployed in Iraq. 

Atal Bihari Vajpayee, a Hindu nationalist politician with decades of experience, led the Indian government. The political costs of risking the lives of Indian soldiers for an American war would be prohibitive.

The Indian pursuit of strategic autonomy remained alive and well. The Hindu nationalists collaborated with the Bush administration on terrorism—with an eye on Pakistan and Kashmir—and imported American Islamophobic rhetoric for political gain, but the nuclear isolation imposed by America was never forgotten. 

Prime Minister Vajpayee—moved by the pursuit of great power status, as well as converting a nuclear nationalist surge into electoral gains—greenlit the nuclear weapon tests by India in May 1998 and subsequently declared India a nuclear armed state.

Pakistan followed with its own nuclear weapons tests within days. President Bill Clinton imposed sanctions prohibiting American economic and military assistance to India and Pakistan. The nuclear order led by the United States had been punishing since its first nuclear test in 1974. Now, America had tightened the noose of nonproliferation.

“India had been the target of an increasingly restrictive, rigorous and continually expanding regime of technology denial,” the diplomat Shyam Saran, who served as India’s foreign secretary, lamented in “How India Sees the World: Kautilya to the 21st Century.” India’s economy, energy needs, and electricity shortages were growing. Nuclear power could help but India didn’t have uranium or the advanced nuclear reactors of Europe and the United States since it was barred from the nuclear energy market. 

America evokes unparalleled desire and unparalleled envy. I was in Delhi when I found out about the September 11 attacks: sudden euphoric cries rose from several desks around me. I was a young reporter, and spending my nights trying to learn from Gay Talese, Norman Mailer, Michael Herr, and Joan Didion.

I was among the few in the office who went quiet. America ceased to be invincible that morning. In its wounded fury and indiscriminate lashing out—the  invasion of Iraq, industrial use of torture and rendition, wild expansion of homeland security, and shredding of norms and alliances—America began to squander its legitimacy and moral standing. 

China was rising fast, and the heirs of George Kennan and Paul Nitze were energetically offering manifestoes for managing or containing its rise. They spoke of the road to contain Beijing passing through New Delhi.

They spoke of the shared values of liberalism, democracy, and boisterous multiethnic polities. The reliable American quest for preserving the country’s global dominance and the attractions of  a consistently growing Indian economy updated American ideas about India. 

On October 10, 2008, the United States and India signed the US–India Civil Nuclear Agreement after three years of negotiations and domestic opposition. It was unprecedented: India was firm in its refusal to sign the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, which it considered a discriminatory regime. America modified its laws, created the first exception to the nuclear order, accepted in spirit India as a nuclear weapons state, and opened India’s access to nuclear technology.

 India’s embrace of American influence and power was never more clear. Still, the orgiastic moment wouldn’t change the Indian way of doing business: India would be friendly and open to all the American help it needed—while also pursuing relationships with other powers to strengthen its interests. 

The euphoric success with America was followed by a dramatic decline of the Congress Party and subsequent fall of Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s government. In the summer of 2014, another “New India” was born with the electoral success of the Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party and the rise of Prime Minister Narendra Modi.

In the following years, Modi’s India focused on two interlinked goals: India’s transformation from a semi-liberal democracy into an authoritarian Hindu-first state, and a vigorously advertised pursuit of great power through transactional nonalignment.  

The presidency of Donald Trump magnified perceptions of American decline as he shredded commitments to multilateral institutions, tore up international agreements, and eviscerated even the pretense of values in the affairs of nations.

Trump took a more aggressive approach to China, increased defense cooperation with India, and strengthened the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue alliance between India, the United States, Australia, and Japan to contain Beijing. The great gift Trump’s America offered Modi’s India was the gift of American silence on minority rights and the limiting of the freedom of press and expression.  

Soon after taking office, President Joe Biden declared: “America is back.” After the Russian invasion of Ukraine, Biden responded with a rousing call of a struggle between “a rules-based order and one governed by brute force.”

American attempts to make Russia’s isolation a matter of stark moral choice clashed against a transformed world that was uninterested in arranging itself into camps of followers in a Cold War-style confrontation between Washington, Moscow, and Beijing. 

The age of transactional nationalism had dawned and the middle powers had energetically embraced it. Soon after Russia invaded Ukraine, Turkey made sure that Russians knew that their country, despite being a member of NATO, was still a welcoming tourist destination.

The United Arab Emirates had a surge in property purchases by wealthy Russians looking for safe harbor for their wealth as sanctions squeeze them out of Europe. Brazil, where agriculture is a pillar of the economy, sought ways to avoid American sanctions on Russia in order to keep a steady supply of Russian fertilizers flowing into the country. And India moved to purchase immense amounts of Russian crude oil every day—at a steeply discounted price. 

America was and remains the most powerful player in the game. The world was still keen to influence America, become friends, and do business but American sanctimony and rhetoric about democratic values and the liberal order would evoke yawns and sniggers in India and elsewhere in the Global South. The liberal order turned to ash in the fires that eviscerated Palestinian lives and habitats in Gaza—fires that were kept burning by America.  

Testimonies of the famine in Gaza and images of Palestinian children dying of hunger started reaching us in January and February. American power played a great role in ensuring they had been denied food.

I thought of my father telling me stories about an American man, a scientist, who gave years of his life to help hungry strangers across the world grow more food.  I still remember his name. 

Norman Borlaug.  

Basharat Peer is the author of  “Curfewed Night”, a memoir about the conflict in Kashmir, and  “A Question of Order: India, Turkey and the Return of Strongmen.” He has written for The New Yorker, Granta, Foreign Affairs, The Guardian, n+1, and The New York Times. He worked as an opinion editor at The New York Times and at the International Crisis Group as deputy director for its Future of Conflict Program.

This essay was originally published in “ The Ideas Letter, a project of the Open Society Foundations, and is republished with permission.

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UOB Sydney issues record Abn bond for a Singapore issuer | FinanceAsia

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UOB Sydney Branch has priced a A$2 billion ($1.28 billion) three-year senior floating-rate bond on February 21  – the largest-ever Australian dollar issuance from a Singapore issuer.

The pricing of the floating rate instrument, at 0.65% above the three-month Bank Bill Swap Rate (BBSW), also represents the tightest spread achieved by any Asian bank for an issuance above A$1 billion, according to a ANZ media release.


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FinanceAsia Awards 2025 — open now | FinanceAsia

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The FinanceAsia team is delighted to open submissions to the 29th edition of our annual flagship Awards, the FinanceAsia Awards 2025, which recognise the best banks, brokers, rating agencies, consultants, law firms and non-bank financial institutions across the region.

In 2024 markets grappled with significant challenges, including higher than expected interest rates, a slow Chinese economy and several high-profile elections.

On a more positive note, the year saw a number of large M&A deals, IPOs and bond offerings, with markets such as India and Japan performing particularly well. A combination of new technology, such as artificial intelligence (AI), data centres, and the drive towards net zero, will continue to be seen as key investment opportunities in the region.

The FinanceAsia team is once again inviting market participants to showcase their capabilities when supporting clients. We want to celebrate those institutions that have shown a determination to deliver desirable outcomes for their clients, through a display of commercial and technical acumen.

We look forward to meeting the winners and highly commendeds at the FinanceAsia Awards Ceremony in June.

Enter now here: https://bit.ly/3Ptn5KA.

Key Dates

Launch date: January 14, 2025

Entry and submission deadline: February 27, 2025

Winners announced: Week of April 7, 2025 

Awards ceremony / gala dinner: June 26 

Eligibility period: All entries should relate to acheivements from the period January 1, 2024 to December 31, 2024 


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Controversy over Malaysia’s proposed Urban Renewal Act: PM Anwar says Malay land rights won’t be affected

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PUSHING OUT THE HARMFULLY, SAY Competitors

Before its parliamentary presentation, the act has previously drawn criticism from politicians and some home owners.

Tuan Ibrahim Tuan Man, a deputy chairman of PAS and Kubang Kerian MP, argued that the current policy was enough. &nbsp,

He said,” There is no need to create a new rules for development; what matters is more is ensuring that urban populations are not monopolized by a single race.”

The damaged areas may be redeveloped when this Act is passed. He added that those who recently purchased homes for more than RM100, 000 won’t be able to repurchase them for more than RMRM500,000.

Tuan Ibrahim continued,” The chancellor wants capitalists to monopolize the process,” claiming that a secretary had stated lenders are accessible to lend money. This tactic is used sparingly to attract people who can’t afford it, especially Malays and Indians.

Although Malaysia is the country’s largest ethnic group, a sizable proportion of house developers in Malaysia are led by ethnic Chinese.

Tuan Ibrahim made his remarks at a press event on February 19th, according to reports agency Malaysiakini. &nbsp,

His remarks echoe those of PAS Youth’s Hafez, who claimed that the costs” will implicitly claim the voice of minorities, destroy socio-economic balance, and oppress the rights of some groups.”

Hafez said in a speech on February 25 that” this bill is also perceived as putting pressure on industrial residents, particularly the Asian community who are less capable.” Programmers who are interested in the name of metropolitan registration are favored by this new constitutional delivery. Minorities did suffer oppression. They will be forced to leave and renounce their property against their will.

Chang Kim Loong, the National House Buyers Association secretary-general, is another outspoken defender of the legislation.

The partnership, which supports homebuyers ‘ rights, opposes the bill or reconstruction in itself, and not the decreased consent threshold. &nbsp,

Chang argued in a conversation with CNA that the plan to reduce the acceptance threshold violates property rights protected by Article 13 of the Federal Constitution. &nbsp,

He continued, noting that he disagreed with the cultural tone the conversation has adopted because it forces a majority of owners to renounce their property rights against their will.

He added that despite developers offering a one-to-one system exchange, the practice could lead to urbanization and densification. &nbsp,

” Picture a five-storey wall with 200 masters being replaced by a 3, 000-unit highrise.” According to him, a compaction of this size would put pressure on existing infrastructure beyond its capacity, and traffic congestion would get worse. &nbsp, &nbsp,

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Asia easing fast and furious against Trump’s tariffs – Asia Times

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Japan — It’s been years since financial activities in Bangkok had global repercussions. But the Bank of Thailand’s surprise rate cut on Wednesday ( February 26 ) signals how rapidly Donald Trump’s trade curbs are upending Asia’s 2025.

Bangkok was the site of the Asian financial crisis in 1997, the next day it experienced financial conflict. Back then, the economy of Thailand, Indonesia and South Korea collapsed in spectacular currency crises style.

That dark time isn’t always about to repeat itself. The area has come a very long approach: banks are healthier, currencies trade more widely, governments are more visible, markets are more tenacious and main banks have enormous foreign exchange reserves.

But the BOT’s 25 basis-point cut to 2 %, its lowest level since July 2023, follows similar moves in Jakarta and Seoul to counter downside risks that bear US President Trump’s prints.

Bank Indonesia kicked points off with a 25 % interest rate cut in the middle of January. Governor&nbsp, Perry Warjiyo&nbsp, called the split “pro-stability and development” given “global and regional economic relationships”.

The Bank of Korea hit the economic fuel this year. On Tuesday, Governor Rhee Chang-Yong’s team sharply reduced its economic growth projection as it cut prices to 2.75 %. In the BOK’s speech, it cited Trump’s fast-expanding business conflict as the main motivator for easing.

Due to deteriorating socioeconomic sentiment and US price policies, the BOK predicted that local demand growth and export growth would be slower than originally anticipated. It is believed that local economic growth will continue to be stable while inflation will continue to grow.

Of course, the BOK is burying the result, financially speaking. Trump, it’s obvious, is only just getting started. And in a way that sends the three markets into a whirl and battens down the doors. On Thursday, for example, Trump said he’ll double tariffs on China to 20 %.

” While industry have begun to respond to these advances, deep tax risks are still being underpriced”, says Kamakshya Trivedi, a leading global strategist at Goldman Sachs.

Deborah Tan, an analyst at Moody’s Ratings, says Asia’s “overall plan response may be crucial in determining the total effect on credit power. We expect governments will probably work pragmatically, aiming to avoid increase with the US, preferring to communicate on a diplomatic basis, as shown by new developments”.

Even Trump seems unsure about where he’ll impose tariffs next and the scope of the curbs, according to earlier statements. Trump immediately addressed tariffs in Canada and Mexico at a Cabinet meeting this week about the latter being a done deal. Then, he suggested no taxes will ultimately be imposed.

” I have to tell you that, you know, on April 2, I was going to do it on April 1″, Trump said. ” But I’m a little bit superstitious, I made it April 2, the tariffs go on. Not all of them, but many of them.

In a note to clients, Capital Economics claims that Donald Trump’s victory in the November presidential election has only increased the uncertainty by causing significant penalties, tariffs, and the potential upheaval of traditional geopolitical alliances, which could also cause the rest of the world to become more uncertain.

The uncertainty, Capital Economics warns,” could end up weighing on global investment and consumer spending for an extended period, particularly if Trump repeatedly pushes back his tariff deadlines”.

To Paul Donovan, chief economist at UBS Global Wealth Management, the bewilderment factor makes for a uniquely challenging year for markets.

Case in point, he says, is” Trump’s very big announcement on reciprocal tariffs, which turned out to be a plan to investigate taxing US consumers at a future date. Markets had to decide whether the president was being a pushover or a protectionist, and for the time being, they are leaning in favor of pushover.

Of course “delay is seen as an opportunity to do’ deals,'” Donovan says. ” So far, such deals have been more spin than substance”.

Even though the headlines about US import tariffs continue to be a hot topic, according to Thierry Wizman, global rates strategist at Macquarie Bank,” there has been a clear deceleration of the” tax train.” There’s a sense that the administration’s approach to economic and national security issues is more transactional and less punitive”.

One explanation for the ever-shifting trade war plans is that Trump does indeed have his “kryptonite” ,&nbsp, notes Benjamin Tal, economist at CIBC World Markets. Shortly after the stock market reacted negatively to the news, Canada and Mexico were granted 30-day extensions on the 25 % tariff, Tal says.

One world leader who’s not confused about the turbulence to come is Xi Jinping, whose economy is Trump 2.0’s main obsession. Trump’s most recent announcement is a plan to levy an additional 10 % on imports from mainland China.

However, this week, China’s leader sounded more jittery than confident when he urged officials to stay calm as Beijing’s economic storm clouds loom.

China “must strengthen its political will and calmly respond to challenges brought about by changes in the domestic and international situation,” Xi told Politburo and State Council party members, according to Xinhua News Agency.

As Trump raises the stakes, Xi’s economic team begins. Trump has so far avoided paying 60 % tariffs on China, which he frequently threatened during the campaign trial. And now he’s reversing his previous approach, Joe Biden, and specifically focusing on the trade war.

For all its Biden criticisms, Team Trump is mulling ways to expand Biden’s curbs on Chinese semiconductors. The White House is also encouraging influential allies around the world to intensify efforts to stop China’s chip industry from expanding.

DeepSeek, a Chinese AI startup, is being investigated in the US. White House investigators are looking into DeepSeek‘s suspicions that it violated export controls to purchase sophisticated Nvidia chips in Singapore through a third party.

Tariffs, though, are still the main Trumpian event, raising collateral damage risks for Asia. And Trump trade advisors, like China hawk Peter Navarro, are angling for more.

” Trump’s new ‘ America First Investment Plan ‘ seals the fate of a deepening US-China conflict, reinforcing the earlier America First Trade Plan”, says Yale University’s Stephen Roach, formerly chairman of Morgan Stanley Asia.

” This isn’t an artful ploy for a grand deal with Beijing. Trump’s MAGA base is incredibly anti-China, which makes it all but impossible for him to change his tune. He’s cornered”!

From Trump World, new ways to complicate China’s year keep coming in. Case in point: possible fees on China-made commercial ships used for moving goods to slow China’s domination of ship-building.

China’s place in harm’s way has officials in Bangkok, Jakarta, Seoul and elsewhere slashing rates – and odds are there’s more monetary easing to come. That includes the Philippine central bank, which cut interest rates by 25 basis points in December.

It’s not that developing Asia worries about sustaining direct hits from Trump’s tariffs. It’s prepping for the indirect, but still devastating, blows to come as mainland China’s trade, investment and tourism shifts into reverse. China, which is subject to Trump’s tariffs, poses a serious threat to all of the world’s South.

Risks abound as Trump and his unelected enforcer Elon Musk systematically monitor US institutions that safeguard the value of US Treasury securities and the dollar, which are crucial to developing Asia’s trade-dependent economies. A US national debt that is close to$ 37 trillion would be significantly increased by the trillions of dollars in proposed tax cuts, according to Trump.

Trump and Musk are undermining the Internal Revenue Service’s function, which could alarm investors and credit rating organizations. This includes Asian central banks, which have nearly$ 3 trillion in assets.

Regardless, there are numerous economists who disagree on whether Trump’s bite will be as bad as his bark. &nbsp,

Our “aggressive Trump” scenario, which assumes high trade tariffs and significant deportations, would be stagflationary for the US economy and likely plunge the rest of the world into recession, according to Schroders ‘ economists in a note.

But, Schroders argues, “upside risks are also emerging. While DeepSeek could speed up AI adoption, macroeconomic reform is back on the agenda for governments looking for growth, and bank lending displays signs of life.

The economists add that” steep falls in oil prices could also conceivably relieve inflation pressures later in 2025″ at the same time.

Of course, the inflationary effects of Trump’s tariffs could dominate global pricing dynamics instead.

According to Chief Goldman Sachs economist Jan Hatzius, Trump’s tariffs will increase personal consumption expenditures (PCE), the preferred measure of the US Federal Reserve, by about 1 %. Already, that rate is running at 2.8 % annually.

According to our general rule,” We estimate that the proposed tariff increases would increase core PCE prices by 0.9 % if implemented, based on the assumption that every 1percentage point ] increase in the effective tariff rate would raise core PCE prices by 0.1 %.”

Gene Ma, head of China research at the Institute of International Finance, adds that “tariff-driven inflation complicates monetary policy, raising uncertainty for the Fed”. And for developing nations who fear that Trump might restore Asian financial crises.

Follow William Pesek on X at @WilliamPesek

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Phuket to set up local ‘waste banks’

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In: South-East Asia

Land is looking for better ways to cope with rising garbage volumes.

PUBLISHED: 26 Feb 2025 at 18: 31

Phuket has five landfills but three older ones have been shut to prevent a negative impact on nearby residents. (Photo: Reuters)
Phuket has five dumps, but three of them have been closed in order to stop the local citizens from getting sick. ( Photo: Reuters )

Authorities on the tourist area are looking for better ways to manage the 1,200 tonnes of waste generated every day, so Phuket City is preparing to launch a” area spend bank” program.

On Wednesday, lieutenant governor Supachok Laongpetch highlighted the growing difficulties of waste management in Phuket province, especially in the metropolitan area.

As part of a larger effort to address control and removal issues, the city has collaborated with local communities to set up a spare bank in each neighborhood, according to Mr. Supachok.

He claimed that the spare bank was created to encourage sustainable waste management practices, increase local communities, and reduce waste.

The program encourages residents of communities to individual recyclable materials like paper and plastic containers, which can be sold at the spare banks. He predicted that the program would eventually cover various areas of Phuket.

Regular daily spend level in Phuket is 1, 200 kilograms. The number compares with 961 tonnes in 2023 and 742 tonnes in 2022, generally reflecting the quick recovery in tourism amounts.

The state now operates one burning flower, which can only handle up to 700 tons per day. Due to this, waste are required to store 500 tons of spend each time.

Additionally, one of the facility’s burning units is currently undergoing repair, which reduces the ability for incineration to 300 tons per time, further increasing the amount of waste that is sent to landfills to 900 tons. This could cause unpleasant odors to affect local communities.

Phuket City has granted permission to a private company to construct a waste-to-energy herb that can process up to 500 tons of spend per day and generate about 10 megawatts of electricity in response to the growing spend level. By 2027, the herb is anticipated to be finished and will continue to operate for 20 years.

Phuket has five waste, covering a total place of 120 ray. The fourth and fifth websites, which are located close to the coastline, are now receiving fresh waste because the first three, which are close to communities, were shut to stop them from causing a problem for the residents.

The city has set up a centralized control service for hazardous waste. It collects and disposes of hazardous substances, such as batteries, bright lights and aerosol cans from firms, ensuring appropriate waste in accordance with sector regulations.

Similarly, infectious spare from institutions, which amounts to 2.2 kilos per day, is collected and treated using gas google technology to prevent the spread of diseases.

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Trump risks backlash with fast and loose US debt claims – Asia Times

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In: Asia, Finance

The US senator, Donald Trump, is challenging official numbers around the country’s national debt, suggesting probable fraud in its analysis. The government’s comment have given a contentious twist to a problem that is both significant and significant for the United States. And it has implications for both the global market and the financial markets as well.

The total amount of cash the US government owes is the total amount spent on paying over its income in addition to years of borrowing. Over time, this volume has grown considerably, becoming a focal point for political disputes and financial forecasts.

The US bill time indicates an amount of debt of over US$ 36 trillion, related to$ 107, 227 per US resident.

Based on the US overall public debt collection, this number is based. The US bill has grown noticeably since the 2008 crisis, with a further increase occurring during the Covid crisis, is obvious.

This results in a US national debt that is roughly 121 % of the GDP. For comparison, the UK’s Office for Budget Responsibility puts American federal debt at 99.4 % of GDP in 2024.

Given that it is necessary to spend money to support their markets during recessions, this style is prevalent in developed economies.

Trump has also asserted that the US may include less debt than was initially believed as a result of this alleged fraud. Putting off possible fraud, it is well known that the title debt figure exaggerates the amount of national debt.

Due to the fact that it includes debts held by the Federal Reserve Banks as well as debt owed to one portion of the US state to another, When these payments are taken out of the US national debt data, we can determine how much debt is held by the general public. Although this is substantially lower, it continues to grow in a similar way over time.

How much more of the US’s GDP has grown as a percentage of GDP:

The conventional wisdom ( kindness of Mr Micawber, a figure in Charles Dickens ‘ book David Copperfield ) is that an income greater than expenses equal pleasure, while the same results in pain. However, this does not always apply to public loan.

In the end, we have a loan to ourselves ( and our future generations ). What truly matters is its long-term conservation, meaning that the debt-to-GDP amount is not following an incendiary design.

This kind of design could lead to a higher risk premium ( in other words, the interest ) being demanded by investors, which would have a negative effect on private opportunities and growth prospects. Moreover, it likely raises the risk of definition.

Our research has demonstrated that there is no universally accepted level below which debts can become untenable. Instead, each case requires context-specific analysis looking at macroeconomic fundamentals such as inflation and unemployment, financial crises as well as the ( potentially self-fulfilling ) market expectations.

Trump’s taking

Without providing any supporting evidence, Trump has just questioned the validity of the methods used to determine the national debt. He asserts that potential fraud has been discovered by the Elon Musk-led Department of Government Efficiency ( DOGE ). If confirmed, these findings could drastically affect perceptions of the country’s economic status.

His controversial claim that the US is” not that wealthy right now” has also been highlighted by reports. We owe$ 36 trillion because we let all of these countries exploit us. The US debt, which was the result of decades of fiscal policy choices in the wake of various economic shocks, is a source of perplexity for these claims. Bill itself doesn’t raise any concerns for experts.

Although foreign stakeholders ‘ holdings of US federal debt have increased over time, less than 30 % of GDP is currently attained. This is down from an all-time deep of 35 % during Trump’s second name back in 2020 during the pandemic.

Of the US national debt held by foreign nations, the largest quantities are owned by Japan, China, and the UK. However, when other nations hold US federal loan, it has nothing to do with” taking benefits” of the US.

In fact, the US dollar is the world’s powerful car money. It is on one side of 88 % of all trades in the foreign exchange market, which has a global daily turnover of$ 7.5 trillion.

As such, the US gains from a so-called “exorbitant opportunity”. This benefit is derived from the worldwide demand for the US Treasury securities’ and the US dollar’s status as” secure have ns,” which has allowed the US to issue debt with interest rates that are relatively lower.

According to research, the US dollar’s” safe have n” status has increased the US’s highest level of sustainable debt by about 22 %. What’s more, it’s estimated to have saved the US government 0.7 % of GDP in annual interest payments.

These benefits come from the fact that US Treasury securities have historically been viewed as risk-free property. Because they are backed by the US government’s full faith and credit, this is especially true during times of severe international financial strain. The US has a proven track record of paying its debts responsibility.

Trump’s remarks, however, could lead to merchants reevaluate the accuracy of official information and the potential risks associated with US Treasury securities and undermine the confidence of monetary areas. These remarks, whether true or false, effect on delicate issues of authorities transparency and fiscal responsibility.

Any advice that the US president’s debt figures are uncertain could be disruptive. Because of this, they may raise questions about the US governmental system’s dependability among the foreign buyers and the holding companies of these securities.

Similar to Trump’s tariff threats, it may be difficult to claim that various nations who own a sizable portion of the US government’s debt are opportunistic. The president’s political diplomatic relations with key debts may become strained, which could lead to greater uncertainty in global financial markets.

For maintaining confidence in the US economy and the ecology of the global financial system, distinguishing between politically charged rhetoric and governmental ecology of the US federal debt will be crucial.

Gabriella Legrenzi is senior teacher in economics and finance, Keele University, Reinhold Heinlein is senior lecturer in finance, University of the West of England, and Scott Mahadeo is senior lecturer in finance, University of Portsmouth

This content was republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original content.

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If Trump attempts World Bank retreat, China-led AIIB could step in – Asia Times

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In: Asia, Finance

Donald Trump is well known for his hostility toward internationalism and international businesses. The US senator made the announcement to leave the Paris Agreement on Climate Change and the World Health Organization shortly after taking office on January 20, 2025.

Was the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund follow? Surely, supporters of the twin organizations – that have formed the backbone of world economic order for 80 years – are concerned. A Trump-ordered evaluation of Washington’s support for all international organizations has sparked fears that the US will endow more money or withdraw it immediately.

But any receding of U. S. authority in international financial institutions may, I believe, run counter to the president’s apparent political goals, creating a suction for China to move into and get on a bigger international role.

In particular, weakening the World Bank and any other multilateral development banks, or MDB, that has a large US presence may present an opportunity for a little-known, fairly new Chinese-led global business: the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank– which, since its inception, has supported the pretty diplomacy the U. S. is attacking.

AIIB’s contradictory function

Nine years ago, China established the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank ( AIIB ) as a means of investing in infrastructure and other related sectors in Asia while promoting “regional cooperation and partnership in addressing development challenges by working in close collaboration with other multilateral and bilateral development institutions.”

Since then, it has provided an example of an international organization that is willing to cooperate closely with other significant international organizations and adhere to global growth banking standards and standards.

This may conflict with the portrayal of Beijing’s global efforts that are frequently portrayed by China eagles, of whom there are many in the Trump presidency, who frequently envision a China that is determined to undermine the progressive, Western-led world order.

However, as some researchers and other Chinese experts have suggested, Beijing’s policies in international monetary management are frequently nuanced, with actions that both support and denigrate the liberal world order.

As I explain in my new guide, it is apparent that the AIIB is a paradox today: an institution created by an authoritarian government but connected to the rules and standards of the progressive global order.

A group of men and women sits during a forum.
Foreign Finance Minister Lou Jiwei addresses the audience at the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank signing ceremony on October 24, 2014, in Beijing. Photo: Takaki Yajima / POOL

The AIIB has a strong connection to the rules-based system, as demonstrated by its numerous joint relationships with other significant multilateral development banks, including the World Bank and the Asian Development Bank under the leadership of Japan.

In this context, the AIIB might offer a Taiwanese opposition in a country where US leadership is waning.

The AIIB’s collaborative pattern

Multilateral development banks have been providing the crucial role of lending billions of dollars annually to promote economic and social development for years.

They can be important sources of funding for poverty reduction, inclusive economic growth and lasting development, with a newer focus on climate change. These global lenders have also been remarkably resilient in the current climate of discord and crisis, with member countries earnestly looking into ways to improve their standing.

At the same time, MDBs frequently receive criticism from civil society organizations because they point out areas of poor performance and are concerned about potential negative effects of the main MDBs ‘ greater focus on working more closely with the private market. Big” MDBs were built around a set of geopolitical and economic strength relationships that are disintegrating before our eyes,” according to MDB professional Chris Humphrey.

There was a lot of concern among key countries about China’s motives when Chinese President Xi Jinping proposed in 2013 the establishment of the AIIB to aid in the development of infrastructure in Asia.

The Obama administration responded by urging different nations to abstain from joining. Its priority was that China may use lending to expand its influence in the area without upholding strict environmental and social standards.

However, all the other main nonborrowing countries, with the exception of Japan, joined the new lender. Now, the AIIB is the second-largest international development banks in terms of member states, behind simply the World Bank. It now has 110 member governments, which translates to over 80 % of the world population. With US$ 100 billion in cash, it is one of the medium-sized international loans.

From the get-go, the AIIB was designed to be collaborative. Jin Liqun, the first president of the bank, has a long history of multilateralism, having spent many years working for the Chinese banking department, the World Bank, the Global Environmental Facility, and vice president of the Asian Development Bank.

Previous executive managers and staff from the IMF and other development bankers were among the international group of experts who assisted in the creation of the AIIB, as well as two American with much careers at the World Bank who played key roles in the creation of the company’s articles of agreement and its environmental and social model.

How the AIIB influenced people to learn from them

In a variety of ways, the bank fits into the international development environment. The Asian Development Bank’s mandate, which promotes “regional cooperation and collaboration in addressing growth challenges,” is directly related to the Asian Development Bank’s base.

The AIIB has environmental and social norms in line with other important multilateral development banks, as well as its conventions and policies.

The AIIB collaborates closely with its classmates, besides stealing fundamental ideas. The World Bank originally ran the AIIB’s government functions. In its early years, the AIIB co-financed a significant portion of its assignments with other bilateral development institutions.

In a recent sign of cooperation, in 2023, a deal between the AIIB and World Bank’s International Bank for Reconstruction and Development ( IBRD ) saw the AIIB issue up to$ 1 billion in guarantees against IBRD sovereign-backed loans. This increased the IBRD’s capacity to provide more money, while diversifying the AIIB’s payment collection.

As of February 6, 2025, the AIIB had 306 approved initiatives totaling$ 59 billion. Its two biggest lending sources are transport and power. Recent projects that have received approval include funding for Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan’s wind power plants and an Indian solar power plant. India, which has a slippery partnership with China, is one of the company’s largest consumers, together with Turkey and Indonesia.

collaborating and competing with China

From its conception until recently, the bilateral AIIB has frequently distinguished itself from China’s diplomatic efforts. China’s Belt and Road Initiative, a framework for network borrowing by Chinese corporations that has been criticized for lacking transparency and accountability, is one of them.

However, some Belt and Road-linked initiatives have faced problems about problem, costs and the transparency of the loan contracts.

The AIIB has made more mention of the benefits of working with Belt and Road lenders in recent years, and the lender now houses the Secretariat of a service called the Multilateral Cooperation Center for Development Finance, which provides grants and assistance to developing nations seeking to finance equipment in nations where Belt and Road lending takes place. This may blur the distinction between loaning under Belt and Road and AIIB, but it doesn’t appear to lower the company’s standards.

No fresh concerns about the impact of the Chinese government at the AIIB. In June 2023, Canada froze its ties to the bank in a pending investigation into a French employee’s dramatic resignation after claiming that the bank was ruled by Communist Party users.

No additional member countries expressed their concern, and Canada has not yet released a report on the situation. An internal review by an AIIB executive director contained no findings to support the claims.

It would be wise for the new US administration to consider the variations in China’s strategies in global economic leadership as its formulation of its policies toward China may require more complex responses. Recognition of areas of assistance, competition, and conflict calls for more complex responses. The US will cooperate with China in many areas while competing with China.

Interestingly, any actions by the Trump administration to reshape multilateral organizations could put the AIIB in a better position to collaborate than the world’s leading multilateral development banks and the US, regardless of whether or not it is an anomaly. role.

At American University, Tamar Gutner is an associate professor.

The Conversation has republished this article under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

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