The government of the United Kingdom just announced that they would be applying to join the Chinese-led Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank as a founding member.
The United States currently dominates the global financial system. But after years of sanctions, wars, debt, money printing and regulations, the rest of the world are looking for an alternative.
The soon-to-be-live Chinese International Payment System (CIPS) will provide a way for banks to transfer funds to one another without having to use the US banking system or the US dollar.
Shanghai by night courtesy of Wiki Commons
China is also the initiator behind both the BRICS development bank (called the New Development Bank, or NDB) as well as the Asia Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB). Both of these are multilateral development banks that aim to end the dominance of the western-controlled World Bank and IMF.
NDB includes all the BRICS nations– Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa.
Founding members of the AIIB include China, India, Indonesia, Kazakhstan, Mongolia, etc. They’re typically all rapidly growing and/or resource-rich developing nations.
New Zealand was the first western nation to join AIIB in October 2014, and Britain has just announced its intention to become the second.
The signatories to the NDB and AIIB charter documents want to create an alternative to the United States dominance of the global financial system by launching these new development banks and an alternative payment system together.