The Chinese currency remains far from supplanting the U.S. dollar in global trade, but its increasing usage abroad is helping its allies and friends get around U.S.-led economic measures.
A clerk counts renminbi banknotes at a branch of Bank of China in Nantong, Jiangsu province, July 23, 2018. Credit: Imaginechina via AP Images
The opening of the Rooppur nuclear power plant in eastern Bangladesh next year will provide the largest boost to the country's energy production capabilities in decades. But it will carry another distinction relevant to international finance — it will have been paid for, in large part, with renminbi, even though China has barely been involved in its construction.
Using China’s currency has helped solve a long stalemate between the government in Dhaka and Russia, which initially agreed to finance the $12.7 billion project in 2016. Following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine last year, the U.S. effectively shut it off from the dollar-dominated global financial system, making it nearly impossible for Bangladesh to make loan-related payments in greenbacks; Bangladeshi officials, meanwhile, refused to settle the transaction in Russian rubles.
The Rooppur nuclear power plant currently under construction in Rooppur, Bangladesh, June 29, 2022. Credit: Energy & Power
This week, ho
Exclusive longform investigative journalism, Q&As, news and analysis, and data on Chinese business elites and corporations. We publish China scoops you won't find anywhere else.
A weekly curated reading list on China from David Barboza, Pulitzer Prize-winning former Shanghai correspondent for The New York Times.
A daily roundup of China finance, business and economics headlines.
We offer discounts for groups, institutions and students. Go to our Subscriptions page for details.
On Thursday, Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo met with Wang Wentao, the Chinese Commerce Minister, in Washington. It marked the first cabinet-level meeting in Washington between the U.S. and China during the Biden administration, and it was a signal of the Commerce Department’s increasingly central role in the current U.S.-China relationship. Usually, the Commerce Department is far from the center of anything, but as Katrina Northrop reports, the department is uniquely suited to address the China challenge.
The lawyer and author talks about the attack on a train in the 1920s which created an international incident, the rise of the Communist Party and the conditions for foreign media in China today.
