The ADB and AIIB: cooperation, competition and contestation

The push for greater infrastructure connectivity within the Asia-Pacific as a mechanism for advancing socio-economic development is supported by all the region's nation-states, multilateral development banks operating in the region, and also regional intergovernmental organisations such as the Association of Southeast Asian Nations, South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation, and the Pacific Islands Forum Secretariat. This chapter explores emergent forms of competition, collaboration, and cooperation between Asia’s two largest multilateral development banks: the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank and the Asian Development Bank. It goes on to analyse the geopolitics that inform the works of these two institutions; how these institutions frame the relationship between infrastructure connectivity and socio-economic progress; and key similarities and differences in their operational structures and funding priorities. Following this geopolitical and operational analysis, the chapter then briefly turns to some of the ways in which Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank and Asian Development Bank development projects and discourse are producing new forms of marginalization, disadvantage, and impoverishment. The benefit and harm of growing regional interconnectivity within the Asia-Pacific is not evenly distributed