The Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank’s environmental and social policies: a critical discourse analysis

ABSTRACT

Like all other multilateral development banks, the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB), which approved its first loan in November 2016, has adopted Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG) policies. Treating the text as Chinese discourse and using Critical Discourse Analysis as methodological tool, this article unveils socio-political interests beyond its contents and semiotics. We identify areas where the AIIB policies are intertextual with the ones that inspired them, namely those of the World Bank and the regional multilateral development banks, but also important departures from their discursive practice, reflecting the legal culture and strategic interests of AIIB’s founders. Both appropriation and colonisation of ‘classical’ ESGs by the AIIB ones lead to reflection on social wrongs associated with development, and suggest solutions for turning development safeguards into meaningful instruments.

KEYWORDS:

• Asia
• AIIB
• China
• development lending
• social justice
• critical discourse analysis

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes on contributors

Ciprian N. Radavoi is a former human rights lawyer, with five years of academic experience in China prior to his actual position in Australia. He published numerous articles and book chapters on social justice and communities' rights.

Yongmin Bian is professor of international law at the University of International Business and Economy, Beijing. Her research focuses on international environmental law, environment-related trade and investment issues.

ORCID

Ciprian N. Radavoi http://orcid.org/0000-0002-9538-6019

Yongmin Bian http://orcid.org/0000-0002-7950-1160

Notes

1 In the case of dams for example, Chinese corporations seem to have run out of work at home, after having built by now some 87,000 dams (see https://www.internationalrivers.org/programs/china).

2 ‘Culture’ is a vague and all-encompassing term, with hundreds of definitions given in the literature. We employ it in a general understanding, relying on Hofstede’s (2002, p. 92) observation that ‘the way people think, feel and act in many different kinds of situations is somehow affected by the country they are from’.

3 The phrase was first used by the former WB vice-president Willi Wapenhans in a 1992 WB internal report, according to Horta (2002, p. 241).

4 Dominance is power abuse, as opposed to legitimate and acceptable forms of power (Van Dijk, 1993, p. 255).

5 See the letter of protest signed by 186 environmental organisations, showing that Country Systems Approach shifts responsibilities and undermines the role of the WB Inspection Panel. Letter to World Bank to Stop to weaken social and environmental standards, http://bankwatch.org/documents/letter_wb_06_04.pdf.

6 Benefitting from almost unanimous worldwide support after Australia, Canada, New Zealand, and the United States reconsidered their initial rejection.

7 ILO, Ratifications for China, http://www.ilo.org/dyn/normlex/en/f?p=1000:11200:0::NO:11200:P11200_COUNTRY_ID:103404.

8 Ministry of Environmental Protection of China, China Has Acceded to More Than 50 Environmental Treaties, http://www.chinaeol.net/news/view.asp?id=58476&cataid=10.

9 See e.g. China-Switzerland Free Trade Agreement, 6 July 2013 (In article 12.2, China commits to implement effectively its domestic environmental laws and regulation).

10 For example, the independent ‘Morse Report’ on the well-publicized Sardar Sarovar case found obvious wrongdoing of the WB’s management, who approved dam loans in spite of project’s non-compliance with Bank resettlement and environmental requirements (Morse & Berger, 1992).

11 For example, in the China/Tibet case, the WB Board members were not allowed access to the resettlement plan by the Chinese government (Clark, 2002, p. 210). This raises the question of how will China require transparency in project implementation as main shareholder in AIIB, when from the position of borrowing country, it rejected it.

12 AIIB, Project Summary Information, https://www.aiib.org/en/projects/proposed/2017/_download/georgia_nenskra_hydropower/nenskra_hydropower_plant.pdf.

13 For example, there is no provision on the rights of indigenous people in China’s domestic law, which only recognises the rights of minorities.

14 NGOs continuously screen the ESPs, coming with valuable critique and suggestions. See a database grouping comments on development safeguards in NGO Comments on Safeguards at Multilateral Institutions, at http://www.safeguardcomments.org/aiib--ngo-comments.html.