Open QuestionsAIIB head Zou Jiayi on why multilateralism is an ‘infrastructure of global trust’
As the Beijing-based development bank marks its 10th anniversary, its president says institutions like hers ‘create certainty amid uncertainty’
Zou Jiayi is president and chairwoman of the board of directors of the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB), a multilateral development lender headquartered in Beijing and inaugurated in 2016.
Before leading AIIB, Zou was deputy secretary general of the national committee of the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference, China’s top political advisory body. She previously held senior roles at the Ministry of Finance, including as vice-minister, and as part of her three decades of experience in international development finance worked at the World Bank in Washington for eight years, eventually representing China as executive director.
In this interview, Zou discusses her first months as AIIB president and the bank’s 10 years of operations, her vision for the bank’s future, the need for “interconnected development” in a fractured world and how artificial intelligence could assist multilateral development banks (MDBs) in their work.