Zou Jiayi is president and chairwoman of the board of directors of the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB), a multilateral development lender headquartered in Beijing and inaugurated in 2016.
Before leading AIIB, Zou was deputy secretary general of the national committee of the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference, China’s top political advisory body. She previously held senior roles at the Ministry of Finance, including as vice-minister, and as part of her three decades of experience in international development finance worked at the World Bank in Washington for eight years, eventually representing China as executive director.
In this interview, Zou discusses her first months as AIIB president and the bank’s 10 years of operations, her vision for the bank’s future, the need for “interconnected development” in a fractured world and how artificial intelligence could assist multilateral development banks (MDBs) in their work.
You embarked on a “listening tour” of member countries across Asia very early in your tenure. What is the most important message you’ve heard from members about what they need from AIIB in its second decade?
I took up my new post on January 16, the day of AIIB’s 10th anniversary – a milestone we commemorated with our staff at headquarters.
I wanted to begin my tenure with a listening tour, starting in Asia, to hear directly from our members about their priorities, their challenges, their expectations. I wanted to see first-hand how AIIB-financed projects are being implemented on the ground and how they support local communities. And then I wanted to translate those insights into actions that better serve our members.