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https://www.voanews.com/economy-business/chinas-digital-currency-takes-shape-will-it-challenge-dollar?amp.....

China’s Digital Currency Takes Shape; Will It Challenge Dollar?

By John Xie
April 25, 2020 01:15 AM
a man walks by a money exchange shop decorated with Chinese yuan banknotes and other countries currency banknotes at Central, a business district in Hong Kong. China allowed its yuan to sink to an 11-year low against the dollar after U.S. President Donald Trump threatened to block American companies from doing business with this country.
 

FILE - In this Aug. 6, 2019, photo, a man walks by a money exchange shop decorated with Chinese yuan bank notes and other countries' currency at Central, a business district in Hong Kong.

For two days in a row last week, amid coronavirus-related market meltdowns, a group of stocks on China’s main exchange moved so significantly that they triggered automatic circuit-breakers designed to halt trading. But trading was suspended not because the stocks plummeted. It was because they soared.

The explosive rally of digital currency-related stocks followed news that after several years of anticipation, China’s government released a timeline for rolling out its new digital currency in four cities.

In the next month, government workers in these cities will use a smartphone application to receive at least a portion of their paychecks in the form of a digital payment, marking a milestone on the path toward the world’s first digital currency system by a major central bank.

To some experts, the digital currency could represent a serious threat to an American asset that has reigned unchallenged for decades: the U.S. dollar.

The dollar's supremacy

U.S. dollars reign supreme in the global economy. Nearly 90 percent of international transactions in 2019 were in U.S. dollars, and about 60 percent of all foreign exchange reserves in the world are in U.S. dollars, compared with the Chinese yuan, which makes up only 2 percent of global payments and reserves.

The dominance gives Washington enormous power — even in issues that have little to do with finance. Because a linchpin of the global financial system is in New York, where dollar-based payment systems process trillions in transactions, the U.S. government has global muscle in enforcing sanctions.

With so much of the world dependent on U.S. banking, it can mean that even companies with no U.S. operations still depend on the American financial system.

“Even a company that has basically no trade in the United States, their banks do,” Jarrett Blanc, a senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, told The Atlantic last year.

Because of that unique power, organizations like Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps and countries like North Korea feel the bite when they are sanctioned by Washington.

Domestically, the dollar has been a vital asset to Americans, too, especially in times of crisis. As demand for U.S. dollars has increased during the current coronavirus pandemic, the U.S. has been able to borrow at relatively low interest rates, helping to finance its rescue.

“This is an important advantage for the U.S. in responding quickly to a crisis that policymakers in some other major economies lack," Ross Darrell Feingold, a lawyer and political risk analyst who has more than 20 years’ experience advising clients on doing business in Asia, told VOA.

Closeup of fanned US dollar and China yuan bills
 
 

FILE - A closeup of fanned U.S. dollar and China yuan bills.

But this is a disadvantage for other countries whose currencies fluctuate in relation to the U.S. dollar, making long-term budget forecasting more difficult.

As John Connally, President Richard Nixon's Treasury secretary, famously told a group of world finance ministers in 1971: “The dollar is our currency, but it’s your problem.”

China challenges

For decades, the governments of China, Russia and many others pushed hard to create an alternative reserve currency system. But none has had much success.

China's currency is basically only being used in some Asian countries, and in some transactions, such as buying crude oil from Iran, because U.S. sanctions make it difficult for Iran to accept payments in dollars.

But despite China’s complaints over the dollar’s supremacy, Beijing has built its wildly successful economy around it. China gains most of its dollars by exporting goods to the United States. Chinese companies take those dollar payments and exchange them with the central bank for Chinese yuan to pay their workers. The central bank keeps those dollars in reserve. As of March, China was estimated to be holding $3 trillion worth of U.S. currency.

Starting in 2014, China saw digital currencies as a way of shifting away from U.S. dollars. It has since made advancing digital currency technology a key national strategic goal.

National economic plans in 2016 mention advancing blockchain, the technology behind popular digital currencies such as Bitcoin.

President Xi Jinping told his Politburo in October 2019 that China must accelerate the development of blockchain.

Digital transactions expand yuan’s reach

Right now, when two companies that use different currencies create a business contract, the value of the transaction is usually denominated in dollars. This requires the companies to “hedge” the risk that the value of their currency will change, thus changing the value of the contract. That frequently means they need a bank to act as an intermediary, but that may not be the case in the near future.

Michael J. Casey, chief content officer at CoinDesk, a news site specializing in digital currencies, said a foreign importer and a Chinese exporter could mutually instruct computers in a blockchain network to place a renminbi-denominated payment into a kind of digital lockbox as a new way of doing business.

"This decentralized escrow system could let foreign businesses strike trade deals without requiring dollars to hedge their exchange rate risk," Casey said in an interview with VOA.

Jeremy Allaire, CEO of Circle, a peer-to-peer payments technology company, said China’s digital currency could lead to wider global use of the yuan.

“This becomes a mechanism by which [the Chinese yuan] can be used in everyday transactions all around the world,” Allaire said on the U.S. business network CNBC in September 2019, when China announced that it would launch its own digital currency to “protect” its foreign exchange sovereignty.

Experts pointed out that China’s proposed digital currency bypasses the Western banking system, including SWIFT, the Belgium-based Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication, that enables financial institutions worldwide to securely send and receive information about transactions.

'National security issue’

Last July, U.S. Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin said in a White House briefing that cryptocurrencies have already been exploited to support billions of dollars of illicit activity.

Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin speaks with reporters about economic impacts of the coronavirus outside the White House,…
 
  FILE - Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin speaks with reporters outside the White House, March 29, 2020, in Washington.

“This is indeed a national security issue,” Mnuchin said.

To preserve the dollar’s status, analysts have been warning recently that the United States cannot afford to let China get ahead on cryptocurrency.

Tim Morrison, a senior fellow at the Hudson Institute who served as a special assistant to President Donald Trump, told VOA that he believes the prospect of Beijing “dominating this emerging financial technology should be alarming.”

In the United States, digital currencies are still in the planning stages. Facebook announced last summer a global digital currency called Libra, but it is still trying to win approval from regulators.

Earlier in April, U.S. lawmakers introduced a bill that would authorize the Federal Reserve to create “Digital Dollar Account Wallets" called “FedAccounts” to distribute stimulus checks to business and citizens.

Although both efforts are small, there is a lot at stake, Casey, of CoinDesk, said.

"A China victory in the digital currency race would have profound negative effects for the U.S., and Western capitalism generally,” he said.

Casey said even with a head start, it is still a long shot for China to win the battle. But he said, "If the U.S. doesn’t catch up soon, it’s going to lose.”

Michael Hirson, an analyst at Eurasia Group, in an email to VOA also said that while the development of a sovereign digital currency by China does not pose a direct threat to the dollar’s status, Washington should not take its reserve currency status for granted.

"Over the long term, a digital currency could potentially help China promote internationalization of the RMB [renminbi]," said Hirson, who served as chief representative of the U.S. Treasury in Beijing.

Although it is impossible to predict whether or when the dollar will be dethroned, an opinion piece reprinted by China's Commerce Ministry on its official website six years ago, when China began studying the development of a state digital currency, may offer a clue: "RMB will replace USD in the next 15 years," the site said.

It is a top strategic priority for China, and it seems willing to wait. 

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https://www.thestar.com.my/news/regional/2020/04/30/chinese-yuan039s-share-in-global-payments-hits-record-in-march.....

Chinese yuan's share in global payments hits record in March


  • CHINA 
  • Thursday, 30 Apr 2020

    2:41 PM MYT
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663466.jpg

A teller counts cash at a bank branch in Hangzhou, capital of East China's Zhejiang province. -Photo by Hu Jianhuan/For China Daily

BEIJING, April 30 (China Daily/ANN) - The yuan's share in international payments and settlement under the capital account hit a record in March, as cross-border investment replaced trade as the driving force for the Chinese currency's internationalization campaign, according to financial experts.

The country's forex regulator, the State Administration of Foreign Exchange, reported that yuan-denominated cross-border payments accounted for 38 percent of all the currencies by the end of March, a historic high since the figures were published.

 

What this means is that the yuan's position in global payments and settlements has improved significantly after a period of stagnation since 2015, the earlier peak when the RMB was added to the Special Drawing Rights of the International Monetary Fund.

China's financial opening-up has further boosted the use of yuan globally, said experts.

 

According to data provided by global financial messaging network SWIFT, the yuan remained the fifth most active currency for global payments in value terms during March, with a share of 1.85 percent, up from the 1.65 percent in January. The RMB payment value increased by 21.48 percent on a monthly basis in March, according to SWIFT data.

Although the novel coronavirus pandemic has disrupted global financial investment activities, China's capital and forex markets showed resilience.

During the first quarter, the trade surplus in goods and services declined. The net capital outflow during the period may drop aggressively, or turn to a net inflow, compared with the $20.1 billion net capital outflow during the same period a year ago, said Guan Tao, chief global economist of BOC International (China) Co Ltd.

Globally, the prices of risky assets and commodities started to fall at an unprecedented speed since the COVID-19 outbreak. Prices of safe-haven assets, such as gold and government bonds, gained as investors reassessed the economic impact of the virus and rushed for safety and liquidity.

Supported by a relatively stable yuan in the first three months, overseas investment in China's bond markets rose by 48 percent or by $16.7 billion during the period, the regulator said.

China's equity market, however, experienced net capital outflows of 179.9 billion yuan ($25.43 billion), compared with a net inflow of 193.5 billion yuan in the first quarter of last year, official data showed. The global equity markets at the same time suffered the fastest drop in history and the asset price declines reached about half the magnitude seen in 2008 and 2009 at the worst point of the sell-off.

As the global financial conditions have tightened abruptly with the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, China can offer yuan liquidity to the global market, through expanded overseas investment, increased cross-border lending, increased imports and offshore yuan deposits, said Tu Yonghong, deputy director of the international monetary institute under the Renmin University of China in Beijing.

"The COVID-19 pandemic may increase yuan-denominated cross-border investment and accelerate the internationalization process," she said. "The yuan liquidity will supplement the financing gaps arising due to dollar shortages."

Yi Gang, governor of the People's Bank of China, the central bank, said in a recent article that the PBOC would use conversional monetary policy tools as long as possible to support the long-term development strategy, and avoid excessive aggressive stimulus, which may lead to inflation and a surge of debt.

This means that the yuan-denominated assets can maintain relatively higher returns as the "safe haven" for international investors, as many economies look for subzero interest rates, analysts said.

"Further opening up of the financial sector, especially for the yuan bond market, will help promote the internationalization of the Chinese currency," said Tu

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https://arynews.tv/en/china-digital-currency-dollar-monopoly/amp/.......

China starts trial of digital currency to counter dollar monopoly

Web Desk On May 3, 2020 Last updated May 3, 2020
 

BEIJING: China has commenced its ‘first pilot program trial’ of its state-run digital currency in four major cities which is said to further the development of RMB-based trade settlement system ‘designed to counter dollar weaponisation’.

The trail payments were started in four cities including Shenzhen, Suzhou, Chengdu and Xiong’an since mid-April. According to reports, some areas going to host the upcoming events of 2022 Beijing Winter Olympics will also use the sovereign digital currency which would be the first-ever system to be operated by a major economy.

A report published by China Daily stated that the digital currency was formally adopted into the monetary system with part of the government and state-sectors’ salaries and wages in these four cities paid in digital currency starting this month.

A sovereign digital currency provides a functional alternative to the dollar settlement system and blunts the impact of any sanctions or threats of exclusion both at a country and company level. It may also facilitate integration into globally traded currency markets with a reduced risk of politically inspired disruption.’

‘The stability of the Chinese yuan during the COVID-19 crisis has enhanced its appeal to many investors. These two settlement systems – US dollar and China sovereign digital – may operate side by side or if need be, on a mutually exclusive basis.’

‘The third impact of any American withdrawal from China trade and engagement is the strengthening of Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) as a champion of both free trade and trade free from the bully behavior of large nations who care little for the interests of others. The BRI is alive and well with continued momentum to establish an alternative to trade and exchange structures dominated by protectionist Western markets.’

State-media outlet China Daily said it had been formally adopted into the cities’ monetary systems, with some government employees and public servants to receive their salaries in the digital currency from May.

The currency would be used to subsidise transport in Suzhou, but in Xiong’an the trial primarily focused on food and retail, reported Sina News.

Some reports also claim businesses including McDonald’s and Starbucks have agreed to be part of the trial, however in a statement Starbucks told the Guardian it was not a participant. McDonald’s been contacted for comment, reported The Guardian.

Many digital payment platforms are already widespread in China including Alipay owned by Alibaba’s Ant Financial and WeChat Pay owned by Tencent but they were not considered as an alternative to the newly-launched state-run digital currency.

 

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