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The job of White House or State Department spokesperson (or the equivalent in other democracies) has always struck me as a difficult one: one is expected to stand up in public and speak in coherent, grammatically correct language about an extraordinary range of topics prompted by a press that is not exactly your friend, to say the least. So I have a certain degree of sympathy when said spokesman comes up with the diplo-speak version of “uh, I dunno. You got me.”
Earlier this week I did a post on South Korea’s apparent entry into -- and North Korea’s apparent exclusion from -- the new China-led Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB). One of the commentators observed that “China” was denying knowledge of the account in Emerging Markets which, as I noted, I had bothered to confirm. The Yonhap story is typical of the genre:
China unaware of reported snub on N. Korea's intention to join AIIB
BEIJING, March 31 (Yonhap) -- China said Tuesday it was not aware that it had reportedly rebuffed North Korea's intention to join a Chinese-led infrastructure bank because of its fragile economy. China's foreign ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying made the comments in response to a published report by a British financial news website, Emerging Markets, that China refused the possible entry of North Korea to the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB). "I am not aware of that," Hua replied, when asked about the report. However, Hua repeated that the Chinese-led AIIB would welcome "all parties," without specifying North Korea by name. "We welcome the participation of all parties to jointly promote the infrastructure building in Asia," Hua said. A senior North Korean envoy met with Jin Liqun, an interim head of the AIIB, in Beijing in February during which the North expressed its intention to join the Chinese-led bank, Emerging Markets reported on its website, citing a Chinese diplomatic source. However, China's message to North Korea was "no way," according to the report, because the North failed to provide a "far more detailed breakdown of North Korea's financial and economic picture.
One particularly snarky press report described Comrade Hua as “clueless.” Many North Korea: Witness to Transformation readers probably missed this other story, however:
Germany Becomes AIIB Prospective Founding Member (Xinhua)
Germany has been approved as a prospective founding member of the AIIB, China's Ministry of Finance announced today [emphasis added]. Meanwhile, Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban said Hungary has decided to join the bank, Reuters reported. Also, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu signed a letter of application for Israel to join the AIIB, the Israeli Foreign Ministry said, adding that Israel's membership would open up opportunities to integrate Israeli companies into infrastructure projects it financed. Writing in Foreign Policy, Chatham House Director of International Economics Research Paola Subacchi says the AIIB is a threat to global economic governance. "The risk now is the creation of two blocs of economic influence in Asia: one led by China and the other by the U.S. and Japan." Demand for infrastructure investment is large enough to accommodate both, but this is not the point. " At stake is good governance and multilateralism, for instance, in a world of fragmented governance what would be the incentive for Congress to finally approve the IMF reform?
After my colleague Ted Truman circulated the story internally, there was a round robin, and the consensus seemed to be that the story was inaccurate: China’s Ministry of Finance was not calling the AIIB membership shots, but was rather just announcing a decision that had been made by the collective membership at a meeting in in Kazakhstan. The latter interpretation appears to be supported by an update of the story.
But the second story underscores the point I made in the original post, and might explain why the poor spokesperson for the Chinese foreign ministry was caught unawares: these decisions are not being made by foreign ministries—they are being made by finance ministries (possibly with input from central banks). Perhaps at the end of the day the Chinese leadership will decide that getting North Korea into the AIIB is such a significant political goal that it is worth both rolling the Ministry of Finance, as well as taking on the other members of the AIIB, who as I observed previously, may understandably oppose membership and lending to an opaque regime with a history of sovereign defaults. But North Korean membership under such circumstances is a speculative supposition, not standard operating procedure: bankers are bankers, and Chinese bankers are proving no different.
Comrade Hua, I feel for ya.
