On July 7, 2025, the Fudan Institute for Global Public Policy (IGPP) organized the 77th lecture of the Fudan-LSE Lecture Series. Professor Alvaro Mendez from LSE delivered a lecture on the theme of A Decade of Transformation: Assessing the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB)’s Role in Development Across the Global South. The session was chaired by Assistant Professor Xin Ye of IGPP.

Professor Mendez is the Director of the Global South Unit at LSE and serves as a Distinguished Foreign Expert of China’s Ministry of Science and Technology as well as a Visiting Professor of China and International Development at IGPP. His research interests span international development and international relations theory. He is also an Associate Fellow at the Geneva Centre for Security Policy (GCSP), and a Member of the Colombian Council of Foreign Affairs (CORI). He has won numerous teaching awards such as the IR Departmental Teaching Prize in recognition of his teaching of International Relations at the LSE.

At the beginning of the lecture, Professor Mendez reviewed the structure and evolution of multilateral development banks, outlining China’s engagement with these institutions and using AIIB as a case study to discuss shifts in the global financial governance landscape. He analyzed the rise of the AIIB, noting that traditional multilateral development banks have long been dominated by a few countries and struggled to represent the interests of emerging economies. The AIIB, in contrast, emerged as a response to imbalances in the global financial governance system, focusing on infrastructure-specific financing and a principle of depoliticized lending, becoming a crucial force in addressing infrastructure funding gaps in Asia and beyond.

Professor Mendez further examined the AIIB’s operational innovations. For instance, the bank established a transitional “prospective member” mechanism to attract new members and leveraged strong credit ratings to draw private capital into infrastructure investment. Despite skepticism, the AIIB has approved over 300 projects in its first decade, benefiting 38 member countries inside and outside Asia with financing exceeding $60 billion and mobilizing hundreds of billions more for infrastructure construction. Over ten years, the AIIB has emerged as one of the most credible development banks globally.

During the Q&A session, students and faculty actively inquired about the differences between the AIIB and traditional institutions. Professor Mendez demonstrate that the AIIB has so far not imposed policy conditions, but he acknowledged that the current period represents a ten-year “honeymoon phase” that may face new challenges in the future.

After the lecture, Assistatn Professor Ye presented a commemorative gift to Professor Mendez. The event concluded with a group photo of the faculty and students.