Abstract

• The key agenda of Chinese foreign economic policy since 2013 has been Belt and Road Initiative (BRI). The initiative is also a central component of Chinese regional economic and foreign policy. Its goal is to boost economic connectivity from China to Central and South Asia, the Middle East and Europe (the Silk Road Economic Belt) and along a maritime route, from Southeast Asia to the Middle East, Africa and Europe (the 21st Century Maritime Silk Road). To support the goal, Chinese President Xi Jinping announced the initiative of a China-led multilateral development bank, which was known as Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB) in 2013. It is a response to serve financial gap for sustainable infrastructure in Asia and to promote its geopolitical interests overseas as an emerging power. The AIIB cooperates with existing Multilateral Development Banks (MDBs) and takes full advantage of their strengths in promoting economic development in Asia region. It supports China’s banking policy to finance overseas investment projects. Most of AIIB’s signed contract projects are strategic in nature, complementing the BRI. ASEAN and China have been cooperating closely as a top dialogue partner. The total share of ASEAN countries in AIIB is 7.6 percentage of the total amount. In the meantime, AIIB provided some infrastructure projects with the amount of one billion in ASEAN countries. The objectives of the research are to analyse the evolution of the AIIB and to evaluate its cooperation with ASEAN countries. The findings highlighted that its cooperation is well suited to recipient’s needs and supporting development and infrastructure in developing countries in ASEAN, especially, regional connectivity although there are some challenges.