Description
In spite of its youth, the Asian Infrastructure Bank’s influence can be felt across Asia, funding the planned construction of motorways in Pakistan and future environment-saving hydropower plants in Tajikistan. A year in, Natalie Lichtenstein takes stock. How is the bank structured, what have been the successes, and where could it go in the future? Natalie Lichtenstein was the Inaugural General Counsel at the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB). As Chief Counsel for the 57-country negotiations that led to AIIB’s founding as an international development bank, she was the principal legal adviser and drafter for its Charter. That work drew on her 30-year legal career at the World Bank, where she advised on lending operations in China and other countries for the first 20 years, and served in senior positions in institutional governance and reforms for her third decade. She worked at the US Treasury Department on development bank issues and normalization of US relations with China, and has taught Chinese law in the US since the 1980s. She is an Adjunct Professor at Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies, and a member of the Oxford International Organizations (OXIO) Advisory Board. She received an AB summa cum laude in East Asian Studies from Harvard University and a JD (East Asian Legal Studies) from Harvard Law School.
