China’s desire to escape the shadow of the U.S. dollar and build an alternative infrastructure for global finance is being stymied by one major factor: Its reluctance to loosen the shackles around its own currency. By creating the Cross-Border Interbank Payment System, or CIPS, back in 2015, the Chinese financial authorities had hoped to provide a way for companies and individuals to keep money flowing internationally — even if China were ever to come under the same kind of economic pressure Western countries are currently meting out to Russia, following its invasion of Ukraine. The problem is that CIPS has neither the scope nor the technical capability to match its Western counterpart — the Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication (SWIFT), often described as the Gmail of the global banking system. In late February, the U.S. and EU took the drastic step of cutting Russian banks off from SWIFT, making it much harder for Russian banks to participate