China’s Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank is not a symbol of global leadership but a reflection of overreach by a resource-poor, debt-laden state. Failed overseas projects, unpaid international loans, and the true motives behind European participation reveal why AIIB poses fundamental risks.

The AIIB is often portrayed as an alternative global financial institution, but its foundations are fundamentally unstable.
China lacks both historical legitimacy and material capacity to lead such an institution.
Its overseas infrastructure ventures have largely failed, leaving host nations disillusioned.
European participation reflects economic desperation rather than confidence in China’s leadership.
AIIB is less a bank than a political instrument built on illusion.

2017-06-19

Lastly, let us also touch upon the AIIB (Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank), which is led by China.
Fifty-seven countries joined the AIIB as founding members.
Among major nations, only Japan and the United States chose not to participate.
In response, the Democratic Party and others criticized this as a diplomatic mistake and claimed that Japan had become isolated.
Just imagining that a Democratic Party administration would have joined first sends a chill down my spine.

China’s Xi Jinping makes grandiose and delusional statements about the “revival of a Great Chinese Empire.”
However, there has never been such a thing as a “Great Chinese Empire.”
The Qing dynasty, which once ruled vast territories, was a Manchu state, and China itself was merely a conquered colony.
The Yuan dynasty was part of the Great Mongol Empire ruled by Mongols.

Moreover, the regions that produce resources such as rare earths are peripheral areas like Mongolia, Xinjiang, and Tibet, while the areas originally inhabited by Han Chinese are virtually devoid of natural resources.
Kaya Okinori, who served as Minister of Finance under the Konoe and Tojo cabinets and was president of the North China Development Company, once remarked, “China is a country with nothing at all.”

That is why the Chinese government advanced into Africa and Southeast Asia under the pretext of infrastructure development, launching a frenzied form of resource diplomacy that included on-site resource extraction.
However, it has become clear that most of these efforts ended in failure.

Setting aside the quality issues of roads and bridges built by Chinese firms, China repeatedly brought in its own laborers for development projects, refused to hire local workers, and those brought from China often stayed permanently instead of returning home.
Countries that initially welcomed Chinese infrastructure eventually realized there was nothing to gain, describing the situation as colonial in nature, leading Myanmar, Cambodia, and Sri Lanka to completely turn away.

As a result, China’s scheme became the creation of an infrastructure bank.
Yet it lacks the necessary funds.
China claims it has three trillion dollars in foreign reserves and will use fifty billion of that, but it has not even repaid the money it borrowed from institutions such as the World Bank, so it is inconceivable that it truly holds three trillion dollars.

For such a country to attempt to establish an international financial institution under its own leadership is nothing short of brazen arrogance.

As for why the United Kingdom, Germany, and France chose to participate, the reason is extremely simple: they are desperate for export destinations.