Conclusion

Abstract

The chapter reviews the main arguments relied upon to explain the puzzle of LAC’s lack of commitment to full membership of the AIIB. It proceeds to review the latest developments in each of LAC’s seven prospective countries in order to determine its current trajectory and likely future development. It closes with final conclusions about the AIIB and its prospects in the Latin American region.

In this book we have attempted an answer to the question of why Latin Americans have been so remiss as prospective Members of the AIIB. The authors discovered that LAC is the only region in the global South with only one full member of the AIIB, Ecuador. At the time of writing seven countries were still only prospective members.

Observation convinces that this delay is not explained by external factors: neither the AIIB-specific nor the China-related, and probably not the US-imposed, either. None resulted from specific countries’ domestic conditions or particular leaders’ characteristics. We have considered and dealt with international political economy and geopolitics questions: What is China’s self-interest in LAC? Why did AIIB come to so remote a region in the first place? and grappled with structural questions about LAC’s development: Why – despite the dire need and the evident positive economic and societal effects – is it so hard to get physical infrastructure financed in LAC? Where, then, does that leave the region?

By way of conclusion, we wish to review the latest developments amongst Latin America’s perennially prospective Members, in order to ascertain that business as usual still pervades the region and is not likely to change. We then proceed to draw our final conclusions about the AIIB and its prospects in the region.