The installation of Zou Jiayi as president of the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB) should finally put to rest the comforting fiction that the Bank operates as a neutral, apolitical multilateral institution. Although being apolitical is enshrined in the Bank’s founding documents, Zou’s background is not technocratic, reformist or independent. It is unapologetically political — and firmly embedded in the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP’s) governing machinery.
Apart from other high-profile roles serving the CCP in multilateral institutions, Zou served as Deputy Secretary-General of the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC), one of the CCP’s core instruments for enforcing ideological discipline and manufacturing consent. Despite its benign-sounding name, the CPPCC is not a debating society or a pluralistic forum. It exists to align elites, interest groups and public opinion with party doctrine, ensuring that major policy decisions are not merely implemented but legitimized. Its role is coordination and control, not consultation in any Western sense. In short, she is an enforcer, just like her predecessor for a decade, Jin Liqun.
What is equally troubling is the acquiescence of AIIB’s non-Chinese shareholders. Countries such as Australia, the UK and India remain members, their taxpayers underwriting projects that often advance China’s strategic objectives more than their own national interests. This persistence reflects a combination of foreign influence, elite capture and bureaucratic inertia: once inside the tent, exit becomes politically awkward, diplomatically uncomfortable and institutionally resisted.