AIIB remains an unknown quantity

Tokyo

FORMER British prime minister and statesman the late Winston Churchill once referred to Russia as a "riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma". Today, the China-led Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB) shares some of those same characteristics as an unknown quantity. Is it, as popularly presented, simply another regional development bank to add to the World Bank-led family of such institutions? Or is it an organisation that will help to launch China as a global economic and political power and bind the vast Eurasian continent into a single entity?

As the AIIB readies its Articles of Agreement for signing by the 57 major and minor, Asian and non-Asian countries that have so far opted to join, st…