AIIB president steers bank to new heights

Multilateral financial institution gets triple-A rating within 18 months of its inauguration

Jin Liqun, president of the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank, is far from being a household name in China, yet he is arguably one of the better known Chinese in Washington.

David Malpass, the new president of the World Bank, referred to him simply as "Mr. Jin" in his first, brief news conference on April 11 in Washington, while The New York Times identified him as "a banker inspired by Western novelists" who is seeking to build Asia.

A Shakespearean scholar and former vice-minister of China's Finance Ministry, Jin has led the multilateral development bank to expand its membership from 57 to 93 in three years, finance projects with other such banks to the tune of billions of dollars, and secure high ranking from leading rating agencies.

The 69-year-old said the AIIB looks to continue its close partnership with the World Bank and other lenders and strike a balance between the increasing expectations placed on his bank and the AIIB's mission, while never straying from the path of operating as a "lean, clean and green" organization.

In an interview in Boston on the sidelines of the annual Harvard College China Forum on April 13, Jin was back to being the scholar he was decades ago, expressing his appreciation for US writers who had helped him understand the country and its history better.

Among his favorites are Nathaniel Hawthorne, Mark Twain and Theodore Dreiser, though William Faulkner stuck with him the most.

"I read the Nobel laureate's Go Down, Moses many times because if you don't read it carefully, you simply don't know what he is talking about," Jin said. He has also read Faulkner's Absalom, Absalom! at least three times.

"This has really inspired me with an increased sensibility toward human relationships, and humans' relationship with nature," he said.

While Jin may not have directly translated what he read into the culture and core values of the AIIB, he has ensured that the institution cares for communities.

"This bank should be lean, clean and green. That means a bank with a core group of professional staff that stays busy and a nonresident board of directors, which is not corrupt and cares about the environment," said Jin, who once chaired the supervisory board of China Investment Corp, the country's sovereign wealth fund.

To meet AIIB standards for quality, projects must be financially viable and eco-friendly, and equally important, embraced by local communities, he added.

"By working with all the other founding members, we've managed to set up a bank with a new governance structure, and a new modus operandi, yet the same standards of environmental and social safeguards," Jin said.

Within 18 months of inauguration, the AIIB received triple-A ratings from the three leading credit rating agencies - Moody's, Standard and Poor's, and Fitch - in 2017. The top rating was confirmed in 2018.