It is an exaggeration to talk of the pace of reform at the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund, for there has been almost none to these, the so-called “Washington institutions” that, together with the US Treasury, have both sustained and constrained the global economy since 1945. How to reflect the changing balance of economic power has been endlessly discussed but rarely implemented.

That is why countries that had hardly any economic profile three-quarters of a century ago but are now giants, such as China, are starting to change it from the outside. The creation of the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank, to which 21 countries signed up in Beijing on Friday, is in part a product of this frustration. The new bank will be both a rival to the existing Asian Development Bank, an offshoot of the Washington institutions, and potentially a complement to them.

The bank is relatively small, the majority of its $50bn startup capital coming from China. But if and as it grows, it will give China the clout in regional financing that membership of the ADB has not allowed it to wield, in spite being a generous capital provider to it. The problem is that the United States has been cool towards a development that would increase China’s soft power and economic influence, particularly in south-east Asia, and would upset Japan, which holds the presidency of the ADB. Japan has kept its distance, while Australia, Indonesia and South Korea, although they have been in discussions, were not at the founding meeting. So there is a power play under way in which, as in other areas, Chinese assertiveness is being resisted by America and its close Asian allies.

What is not in contention is that the Asia-Pacific region needs more infrastructural funds. For that reason alone, a reinforcement of this kind should be welcomed.

Strategically, the United States cannot keep on shoring up an obsolete economic order in Asia. China is not withdrawing from the Washington institutions, it is supplementing them. Unlike certain other aspects of China’s policy, this development is properly seen in the context of the “peaceful rise” which China’s leaders have proclaimed. This is a case for accommodation, not confrontation.