Fudan-LSE Lecture Series No.6

THE SPEAKER

Natalie Lichtenstein was the Inaugural General Counsel at AIIB and Chief Counsel for AIIB’s establishment. She retired from a 30-year legal career at the World Bank, including lending operations in China and other countries, and institutional governance issues and reforms. She has taught Chinese law since the 1980s and is a Visiting Scholar at Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies. She is the author of A Comparative Guide to the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (Oxford 2018), an insider’s guide to the AIIB and its progenitors. Ms. Lichtenstein was educated at Harvard University, receiving her A.B. (summa cum laude in East Asian Studies) in 1975 and J.D. in 1978.

ABSTRACT

The Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB) opened for business in 2016, as a $100 billion multilateral development bank that finances public and private infrastructure projects for Asia. AIIB’s founders, led by China, first spanned Asia, Europe and the Middle East—now its footprint is global. The birth of this new international financial institution has drawn comparisons and contrasts with its counterparts, such as the World Bank, the Asian Development Bank and the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development. How does AIIB reflect the heritage of these counterparts and the innovation of the 21^st century? Now that AIIB has begun its fourth year of operation, how has it fared?