ABSTRACT
On October 24, 2014, China and 20 other countries signed a memorandum of understanding (MOU), officially launching the Chinese-initiated Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB). This chapter investigates that contingency as it pertains to China's pursuit of the AIIB. It does so by first giving attention to the immediate context and chronology from which the AIIB emerged that is the key drivers, interests, and concerns that have been associated with China's pursuit of the AIIB. In East Asia, ASEAN states, despite some important differences among them, represent the largest and most coherent audience for China's economic initiatives. Within ASEAN, ASEAN's frontier economies of Cambodia, Laos, and Myanmar stand to gain the most from participating in the AIIB. These states, in recent years, have benefited much from China's economic attention already though the AIIB would provide funds for multilateral projects beyond the bilateral and country-specific projects of their bilateral arrangements with China.
