 I'm Salvatore Bogona, and this short video showcases the first two years of lending by China's Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank, or AIIB. I wrote about this for Forbes last month on the occasion of the second anniversary of the AIIB. Now, the AIIB was widely feared to be a Chinese effort to somehow take over Eurasia by strategically lending for projects that would support Chinese foreign policy goals and Chinese military expansion. It was also believed or accused of potentially reducing environmental and lending standards by possibly lending to corrupt regimes and non-democracies. In fact, the AIIB has been both remarkably responsible in its first two years of operation and also remarkably modest in its lending. It's only lent $4.4 billion in its first two years, and although that might seem like a lot of money to you or me, it pales by comparison to something like $6 or $8 trillion of infrastructure investment that's really needed across Asia. I wrote this article for Forbes, analyzing data from the AIIB and its lending patterns. I'll show you in particular this graph about AIIB lending by country, and I'll go to the blow-up here. It's particularly instructive because you'll see immediately that the top recipient of AIIB lending has been India. Now, India is widely considered one of China's most important geopolitical rivals. In fact, India and China had a tense military standoff all through the northern summer of 2017 on their border on the Doklam Plateau at the same time when the AIIB was actively lending to projects in India. India is the top recipient of AIIB lending, both by number of projects and by total lending. Also noteworthy is the third largest recipient of AIIB lending, which is Azerbaijan. Most of this lending in Azerbaijan has gone to a pipeline project, the Trans-Caucasian Pipeline, which will export Azerbaijan natural gas directly or indirectly to Europe by passing Russia. So this is a project that would be very much opposed by Russian geopolitical interests, nonetheless it has been funded by the AIIB. In the article, I also have a map of the distribution of AIIB projects. There's a map or a picture of the Trans-Caucasian Gas Pipeline. And the number of AIIB projects by country, which you can see is concentrated in India, Oman, Indonesia. And these projects are mostly just good-sense civilian projects. If you'd like to get an idea for yourself, go to the AIIB website under Projects and they actually have lists of both approved projects and currently proposed projects. Now, I have asked the AIIB for a list of projects that were previously proposed but rejected. Not funded and they never even responded to my email. So they could improve perhaps on their public engagement by responding to emails. Nonetheless, if you want to see the current list of approved projects, go to their website, the documentation is all there. And one of the most recent ones is the approval of, for example, an air quality improvement project in Beijing. The first AIIB project actually in China itself. An interesting fact, China has received more funding in the last two years from the Japan-dominated Asian Development Bank than it has lent to itself via the AIIB Development Bank. So, you know, I think the idea that China is not working with its, with regional, other regional banks is really unfounded. In fact, if you read my article, you'll find that over half of the AIIB's projects, both by number of projects and by lending, has been done in collaboration with other international development banks, mainly the World Bank, but also the ADB and the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development. So rather than lowering lending standards by, you know, having its own idiosyncratic lending rules, over half of the AIIB's lending is actually going to projects that have already been approved and funded. By these multilateral investment banks. Now, if you'd like to get the data of the, a compendium of all the AIIB's lending in its first two years, just send me an email. I've actually put it all together in a spreadsheet with some simple analytics. So you can see, you know, where the projects are and where the funding is going. But I've just pulled all of that from the AIIB website. It's a pain to pull it all because you have to compile it from individual project documents. So if you want to copy the spreadsheet, just email me. You want to know how to reach me, just find me at my website, Salvaturkabonus.com, where you can also sign up for my monthly Global Asia newsletter. I'd love to hear from you and I hope you'd like to hear from me more as well. Thanks a lot.