"Further steps are expected to change the quota distribution and voting share. As for the veto right of the United States, it eventually will have to budge," Gao said.
The World Bank, also part of the legacy of the Bretton Woods system, has also been criticized for its lack of efficiency and vigor.
Partly as a result of the slow progress in global governance reform, new multilateral development banks such as the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB) and the New Development Bank were established.
Washington is obviously no big fan of the AIIB, which won over Britain and other western countries depsite pronounced dissatisfaction on the part of the United States.
Experts say these new institutions are not only complementary to the existing ones but also galvanize them by introducing more competition. Jin Liqun, inaugural president of AIIB, recently compared the establishment of the new institutions to opening a new restaurant on the same street to meet a huge demand that cannot be satisfied.
Washington, with its zero-sum mindset, has tried to use its Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) as "a bulwark against China's power."
The United States has also benefitted from the role of the greenback as the global reserve currency, but often at the cost of other economies. Economic policy making based solely on U.S. domestic economic conditions often have negative spillovers to other economies, especially those emerging economies that are inherently weak in terms of governance.
"With the continuing tightening of U.S. monetary policy, there is a risk of further slowdown in the global economy, primarily in emerging markets," said Ilya Prilepsky, an economist with Economic Expert Group, an independent Russian think tank.
The dollar's global primacy "allows the United States to keep printing dollars to pay the world," said Indian economist Mohan Guruswamy.
But it is not easy to change the status quo in the foreseeable future. "The dollar is the world's currency of choice," Guruswamy said.
There has been signs of a change as the United States now has to consider the spillback from the emerging economies, which now account for more than a third of the world economy, based on IMF statistics.
Sluggish growth in emerging economies as a result of the U.S. pursuing its own interests could negatively impact the U.S. itself, said the research fellow Gao.
Tristram Sainsbury, research fellow at Australia's Lowy Institute for International Policy, said emerging economies need more say in multilateral systems, but developed nations may dislike their cheese being moved.
Jin said at a recent forum that he is patient in waiting for the United States to decide on whether to join the AIIB. "Even if you decide not to join," he said, "that does not mean we cannot work together."
