The new digital yuan could shift the balance between China’s banks and Big Tech firms, such as Ant Group’s mobile payments app Alipay. Credit: Markus Winkler, Creative Commons
NEW YORK – While many central banks are still investigating the possibility of issuing a digital currency, China has rolled out a digital currency via a series of pilot programs since last year. The eRMB (my term as opposed to the more awkward official DC/EP) by itself will not help the renminbi to challenge the U.S. dollar’s global dominance. Its true significance instead lies in its potential to alter the balance between China’s technology giants and traditional majority state-owned banks, thus indirectly enhancing the banks’ international competitiveness.
The pilot programs employ a two-tier structure with “controlled anonymity.” The People’s Bank of China (PBOC, the central bank) issues eRMB to an authorized group of large state-owned banks and other selected financial institutions, which then make the money available to households and firms — the digital currency’s ultimate users. Unlike with some other central-bank digital currencies under discussion, Chinese
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