Progress in Asia, or anywhere, depends on the implementation of progressive ideas, and few recent ideas have seemed more progressive to people in Asia - and indeed to people almost everywhere - than the China-proposed Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank.

A glaring exception to the positive reception was to be found in US government circles, where every new idea out of Asia nowadays seems fated to be assessed on the basis of whether it will help Beijing or Washington - but not possibly both. And so the AIIB becomes a "threat".

Blustery binary thinking will be the undoing of intelligent American policy in Asia - and could morph into a continuing migraine for friends and allies across the region, not to mention for China.