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.

A party enforcer at the helm

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.

That pedigree matters because leadership in a multilateral development bank is not just about capital allocation or project appraisal; it is about institutional direction, norms and credibility. A president steeped in party discipline is not likely to treat the AIIB as an independent lender guided by developmental additionality, transparency and borrower need. She will undoubtedly use it as a strategic instrument — just as her predecessor did — one more lever in Beijing’s expanding toolkit of economic and political statecraft.

Deepening alignment with China’s Belt and Road Initiative

Under Zou, the AIIB can be expected to continue, and likely deepen, its alignment, since its inception, with China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI). The creation of both was hatched by the CCP at exactly the same time in 2013. Despite repeated assurances from management that the AIIB is distinct from BRI, the practical overlap has long been evident: shared corridors, synergistic priorities and cofinanced projects that advance China’s geopolitical reach while diffusing financial and reputational risk. The AIIB offers Beijing something the BRI alone cannot: a multilateral veneer that softens political resistance and draws in the capital and legitimacy of advanced democracies. That is why countries like the US and Japan chose not to join.

In this sense, Zou is the perfect candidate. Like Jin, she combines international polish with unwavering loyalty to the party line. The continuity is not accidental. The CCP does not leave strategically important institutions to chance, especially those that intersect with global finance, infrastructure and influence. Leadership succession at the AIIB has followed the logic of absolute loyalty to the Party.

The complicity of non-Chinese shareholders

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. 

Canada is even considering rejoining the AIIB after concerns were first raised by the Bank’s former head of Communications, Bob Pickard (a Canadian), in 2023 about a subterranean management cabal run by the CCP within the Bank, resulting in a “toxic culture.” Canada took the allegations very seriously and froze relations with the Bank then, but this week, Prime Minister Mark Carney was essentially kissing the ring while visiting Beijing.

The justification offered is familiar. Staying in allows these countries to “shape from within,” to promote high standards and to prevent the Bank from becoming a purely Chinese instrument. Yet years of experience suggest that this influence is marginal at best. Governance remains heavily weighted toward Beijing. Strategic direction tracks Chinese priorities. And leadership selection — arguably the clearest signal of institutional “independence” — has remained firmly under Chinese control.

Meanwhile, participation carries real costs. Membership lends credibility to projects that may undermine debt sustainability, distort regional power balances or crowd out genuinely independent development finance. It normalizes a model in which multilateral institutions are repurposed to serve the geopolitical goals of their dominant shareholder, eroding the very norms that postwar development banks were designed to uphold. The AIIB is not the only guilty party among the multilaterals, of course, many of which are similarly highly politicized and experience oversized influence from their leadership overlords. What distinguishes them is that the CCP is not a benevolent force in the world — it is malignant.

Zou’s appointment should therefore be read not as a routine personnel decision, but as a strategic inflection point. It confirms that the AIIB is entering a phase of tighter political alignment with Beijing at a time when China’s external posture is becoming more assertive, not less. For democracies that continue to participate, the question is no longer whether the Bank might drift toward serving Chinese interests. That drift occurred from its inception. The question is whether their continued involvement makes them complicit — and it does.

Multilateral legitimacy captured

Multilateralism only works when institutions are more than instruments of the powerful. When leadership is drawn directly from a ruling party’s ideological enforcement apparatus, claims of neutrality ring hollow. The AIIB under Zou Jiayi is unlikely to surprise anyone who has been paying attention. It will be efficient, disciplined and outwardly cooperative — while quietly reinforcing the expansionary objectives of the state that controls it.

At some point, member countries will have to decide whether symbolic influence is worth substantive compromise. If the answer remains yes, Beijing will have learned an important lesson: multilateral legitimacy, once captured, is remarkably easy to keep.

[Kaitlyn Diana edited this piece.]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy.