'WHAT was he thinking?' is the kind of rhetorical question we would direct at, for example, the lazy high-school student who ended up plagiarising the historical narrative posted on the website of the Ku Klux Klan (KKK) and submitted it as a class paper on race relations in America. It was a silly idea that didn't make a lot of sense, and it wasn't going to work.

Which is unfortunately the kind of question we need to ask US policymakers who appeared not to make a lot of sense on many levels when they decided to launch a major diplomatic campaign against China's proposed Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB).

Remember how American officials and lawmakers were delivering those sermons to the Chinese a few years ago, arguing that as China was emerging as a leading geostrategic and geo- economic power, it needed to take a more activist role as a "stakeholder" in world affairs? In particular, the Americans were complaining that as it was becoming one of the world's two largest economies, China should start using its financial resources to help stabilise the global economy.