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China The Almighty Buck

Yuan Overtakes Dollar To Become Most-Used Currency In China's Cross-Border Transactions (reuters.com) 63

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Reuters: The yuan became the most widely-used currency for cross-border transactions in China in March, overtaking the dollar for the first time, official data showed, reflecting efforts by Beijing to internationalize use of the yuan. Cross-border payments and receipts in yuan rose to a record $549.9 billion in March from $434.5 billion a month earlier, according to Reuters calculation based on data from the State Administration of Foreign Exchange. The yuan was used in 48.4% of all cross-border transactions, Reuters calculated, while the dollar's share declined to 46.7% from 48.6% a month earlier. The volume of cross-border transactions covers both the current and capital accounts. According to data from SWIFT, the yuan's share of global currency transactions for trade finance rose to 4.5% in March, while the dollar accounted for 83.71%.
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Yuan Overtakes Dollar To Become Most-Used Currency In China's Cross-Border Transactions

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  • by rsilvergun ( 571051 ) on Wednesday April 26, 2023 @05:17PM (#63479234)
    there's a cold war going on with China. They have a centrally planned economy. They can easily force this change through even if it's not what the people want. Neo-Feudal capitalism gives you that at least. You can at least make any boneheaded decision for you economy you want and everyone has to go along with it.
    • China is fully capitalist these days.

      They exploit harder than the US, they have most of the manufacturing, they don't ever cut off other countries with self-defeating embargoes.

      • by NFN_NLN ( 633283 ) on Wednesday April 26, 2023 @06:26PM (#63479402)

        > they don't ever cut off other countries with self-defeating embargoes.

        China Hits Taiwan With Trade Curbs Amid Tensions Over Pelosi
        https://www.bloomberg.com/news... [bloomberg.com]

        • by Rujiel ( 1632063 )
          Taiwan is hardly "another country", moreso it's a part of China that has been parasitized by exernal forces.
      • by jhoegl ( 638955 )
        Thats because they are working on gaining power.

        Everyone knows the new kid plays nice with everyone until they gain the power needed to not be nice with everyone.
        • by NFN_NLN ( 633283 ) on Wednesday April 26, 2023 @06:47PM (#63479452)

          > Everyone knows

          13 countries are involved in territorial disputes with China. Some have resulted in physical conflict.

          1. The Philippines

          In November 2021, Chinese vessels had blocked and used water cannons on two Philippine supply boats that were heading to a disputed shoal occupied by Filipino marines in the South China Sea. The hostility which triggered an angry protest from Manila was the latest flare-up in the South China Sea with China claiming virtually the entire waterway.

          Manila is facing a deadlock in a dispute that it cannot resolve alone and while the armed conflict directly involving the Philippines is unlikely, there remains a growing potential for incidents at sea to escalate.

          2. Vietnam

          In another South China Sea dispute, China and Vietnam have long faced ‘maritime territorial disputes over the Spratly Islands and the Paraceal Islands. Despite resolving the issue through diplomacy, breakthroughs have proven elusive.

          3. Japan

          China and Japan have repeatedly clashed over a group of uninhabited islands called the Senkaku islands in Tokyo, the Diaoyu Islands in Beijing, and the Tiaoyutai islands in Taiwan. China began raising the questions of sovereignty over the islands in the 1970s when evidence of oil reserves in the region surfaced.

          For some years, Beijing has been aggravating tensions by increasing the presence of the China Coast Guard vessels in the contiguous zone of the Senkaku/Diaoyu islands.

          4. Nepal

          China has also been accused of encroaching on Nepal’s territory along the two countries' shared border. As per the leaked government report, China has been trespassing in the district of Humla, in the far west of Nepal.

          5. Bhutan

          China shares a contiguous border of 292 miles with Bhutan and the territorial disputes have been a source of potential conflict. Since the 1980s, the two governments have conducted regular talks on the issues.

          6. India

          China has a disagreement with India over its land border in the Himalayas. Both the countries fought a bloody war in 1962, ending in a ceasefire that led to the establishment of the Line of Control.

          7. Indonesia

          The issue between China and Indonesia is another South China Sea dispute. China has repeatedly demanded that Indonesia halt an oil and natural gas project in the region claiming that the efforts to extract the natural resources are an infringement on its territorial waters.

          8. Laos

          Laos has a 313-mile border with China that runs from the tripoint with Myanmar in the west to the tripoint with Vietnam in the east. China alleges that it owns large parts of Laos on a historical precedent dating back to the Yuan Dynasty.

          9. Myanmar

          As per the reports by China, the residents of Myanmar’s northern shan state had destroyed a fence built by the Chinese authorities claiming it encroaches on their country’s territories. As per the experts, if the issues go unresolved it could seriously damage the relations between the communities living in two nations.

          10. Tibet

          After Taiwan, Tibet is perhaps China’s most well-known territorial dispute. In 1950, China enforced a long-held claim on the Himalayan country and incorporated it with its own territory. After an unsuccessful uprising in 1959, Tibet’s spiritual leader, the Dalai Lama fled to India where he had set up a government in exile.

          11. Singapore

          Singapore and China have also clashed over their claim in the South China Sea. It particularly takes issues with building airstrips and hangars, as well as stationing the anti-aircraft and anti-missile systems in the Spratly Islands.

          12. Brunei

          The small Islamic nation has been long described as the silent claimant to areas in the South China Sea because it keeps a low profile in major disputes.

          Reportedly, China has bought its silence over the territorial issues because of an influx of investment that coincided with the suppression of anything that might be d

          • by jhoegl ( 638955 )
            We are talking embargos, as that was the statement.
            • by NFN_NLN ( 633283 ) on Wednesday April 26, 2023 @09:07PM (#63479676)

              China has a history of trying to bully other countries with trade sanctions.

              Canada, Japan, Lithuania, Mongolia, Norway, the Philippines, South Korea, and Taiwan have all felt Beijing’s ire in the form of restrictions or sanctions on specific exports or services.

              https://www.afr.com/world/asia... [afr.com]

              • by sxpert ( 139117 )

                the US have a history of effectively bullying others with actual military intervention, if not attempts at vitrifying the country. for example, the Korea war, with 4M civilians dead, Vietnam with 2M, and illegal invasions such as in Iraq in 2003.
                They also love to provide all the necessary support for coup d'etat to eliminate governments they don't like, such as in Iran (Mossadegh's assassination, 1953), or operation Cyclone in Afghanistan at the end of the 70's
                Hell, the country started with mass murder of n

                • Re: (Score:2, Informative)

                  by Anonymous Coward

                  Korean War, bullying? WTF?
                  Stalin pushed his puppet into a full scale invasion of the south which pushed the defenders back into a tiny corner which held until a counter-offensive near Seoul broke the back of the invasion. The invaders murdered and destroyed and plundered everything it their path.
                  A series of hard fought battles restored the post-ww2 divide at the 38th parallel.

                  Mao Tse Tung at the urging of Stalin entered the war by using the troops left behind by the Nationalists after their retreat to Tai

              • China has a history of trying to bully other countries with trade sanctions.

                .. who, I wonder, did they learn that tactic from?!?

          • You're selectively choosing only a single metric to judge China though.

            The list of countries in the world that have territorial disputes are massive, it's not only China. A lot of Chinese territorial disputes was due to historical legacy. Because borders are often unclear in remote areas, or they were negotiated during a time when the Chinese government of the time had little power and say in it. Yes some are due to China being aggressive in claiming resources for themselves, but that's not unique to them.

            A

      • I wasn't aware that in order to be a fully capitalist country that you had to mandate limits on how much of a company can be owned by anyone or have the state own in excess of 50% of enterprises. Perhaps you should tell them that since they're fully capitalist it's rather silly that CCP stands for Chinese Communist Party. Maybe they need more government oversight of the markets to ensure truth in advertising.

        I suppose you are correct on the other account though. It has been said that under capitalism man
        • by Rujiel ( 1632063 )
          "What, you mean democrats don't want a full democratic system where every issue is brought to a public vote? Are you crazy?! They're called democrats! Better tell them that, hyuk hyuk"
      • Pooh has been looking for you Rabbit.
      • ... they don't ever cut off other countries with self-defeating embargoes.

        Care to re-think that statement? [news.com.au]

      • by Luckyo ( 1726890 )

        China is a Marxist system with top down economy, full government control within every major corporation (must have CCP division that has the ability to terminate anyone within a company and guide policy that is only accountable to CCP), no private property rights (can't own a home for example, only temporary lease from government).

        Capitalism is what West believed China would adopt if we opened up our markets to them. We were wrong. Instead we got a progression of Marxists pushing for centrally planned econo

    • This makes complete sense, what with centrally planned economies being a well-known feature of capitalist systems. Please enlighten us about the tenants of this new feudal system of economics which also somehow incorporates private ownership. If you tell me it operates on collective bartering you may have a full bingo card.

      You can at least make any boneheaded decision for you economy you want and everyone has to go along with it.

      Sounds a lot like the same old communism that China has had since Mao. At least Winnie the Pooh isn't telling the peasants to spend all day driving off sparrows and melting down all of th

    • by jonadab ( 583620 )
      > They can easily force this change through

      It hasn't been easy, no. They've been working very hard for about twenty years to achieve this, and the efforts have only fairly recently started to bear noiceable fruit. And even now, they're for the most part only able to trade in Yuan, with countries whose own currencies are weak, who also happen to view China as their most important trading partner. Granted, that's quite a few countries.
  • by Whateverthisis ( 7004192 ) on Wednesday April 26, 2023 @05:19PM (#63479238)
    In I'm sure completely unrelated news, trade between China and Russia has surged dramatically in the last few months [reuters.com].

    I'm sure some might mod me troll or whatever because this is Slashdot, but the broader point here is that the way this summary and the story are written is to imply some sort of trend is happening, when in reality it's much more likely that a single form of trade acting as an outlier, particularly between to relatively large economies who both have issues with the US, is the driving factor here.

    • by awwshit ( 6214476 ) on Wednesday April 26, 2023 @05:26PM (#63479262)

      ^ This.

      Seems like something driven by sanctions against Russia to me.

    • Exactly. And Russia also used to have USD as their reserve currency and a stable currency for savings of the general population and they have switched to yuan .

    • This is indeed exactly what you assert...the semi-decade cycle of "oh no the US dollar won't be the world currency any longer!" doomcrying.

      I used to think it was just the left casting enjoy for something to be afraid of this week, now I believe it's probably Goldman-Sachs triggering their media minions to shore up a week quarter so everyone hits their bonus numbers.

      • While I think you're right, there's a bit more to it than the usual US internal political fencing match. The US essentially allowed every other country to grow by tapping into and selling to the utterly massive consumer market. Now the US while still far and above the most powerful economy in the world, does have some competition.

        Much of that competition comes from centrally planned economies like China and Russia. As those countries have grown, they start finding their next phase of growth dominated

        • China has a large economy.

          Russia's economy is roughly the size of Ohio's. They are not a major player in the realm of global finance. No one talks about Ohio that way nor should they be about Russia.

          Russia has 2 exports of note: energy to China and until recently to Europe, and conscripts to Ukraine. They don't produce anything.

          • Russia has always been a disaster and yet punched above it's weight. Mostly due to energy exports.

            But no, you're not really correct. Russia has the 11th largest economy in terms of raw GDP, and 6th largest in terms of PPP-GDP. It is a strong exporter of natural resources, mostly oil but also agriculture and mining, and it has a decent arms sector and technology sector so it does also export weapons and technical know-how. Let's not forget that when the space shuttle was discontinued, NASA was forced

            • The country you describe is the Soviet Union before it collapsed.

              Russia has suffered massive brain drain, builds it's jets and tanks by hand, has pulled T62s out of storage to fight in Ukraine, and has a broken economy based on energy exports to China.

              They are a much bigger country than Ukraine so based on sheer mass they stand good odds of grinding down Ukraine's forces. But no they can't produce anything of note in any meaningful quantity.

              Start your reading here and branch out:

              https://www.sandboxx.us/blo [sandboxx.us]

  • by Anonymous Coward

    Right now the cost of insuring (credit default swaps) US bonds/debt is greater than the cost to insure Mexican debt. This has never happened before in history.

  • How much of this is China sending out yuan, and how much is other countries using it to buy stuff from China?
    I suspect most of it is China loaning yuan for BRI projects, which are then immediately returned as payment for the materials and labor that goes into those projects. Is that even international trade when it's China paying itself with loans that will never be repaid?
    • China has signed deals to buy oil and gas from Russia in Yuan. They also signed a deal with Saudi Arabia to buy oil in Yuan. Just recently they did a gas deal with a French company which is also going to be done in Yuan.

      The BRI loans used to be made in dollars and euros. It was basically a way that China found to recycle their excess dollars and spread the risk around.

  • All this shows is that China is doing a better job of hiding potential impending economic collapse:

    https://finance.yahoo.com/news... [yahoo.com]

    (yeah okay this view is considered "contrarian", but it isn't the first instance of someone suggesting that China's fundamentals are weak, that they have out-of-control debt problems that are pretty bad, and have other problems to boot)

  • by Anonymous Coward

    All the talks about China invading other countries, unfair trading, human rights issues, etc, are all BS.

    China stop using and hoarding USD is the real threat to the US hegemony. What "rule based international order" really meant was the US Dollar domination, and now thanks to the endless US money printing since 2008 and most recently the example of stealing Russian USD assets, the whole world (not just China) is running away from USD.

    China is the top trading partner for roughly 150 countries out of ~200 in

    • But the things you call BS are not only true, but the tip of an iceberg of evil. Enjoy your organ thefts, slavery, and concentration camps Pooh bear. Justice will not be postponed forever.
    • If China did something stupid like a mass sell off of US binds, the value of binds would collapse and they'd be left holding zillions of worthless paper, thus killing their own economy.

      They are evil, not insane or stupid or suicidal.

    • >All the talks about China invading other countries, unfair trading, human rights issues, etc, are all BS.
      Uh, say what? I mean, they haven't invaded Taiwan yet, but they keep posturing and making threats, cutting undersea cables etc. Ask anyone from Taiwan how they feel about the situation. Saying China doesn't have enormous human rights issues is absolute BS.

         

  • Or trading in the funny money North Korea was making.
  • Reduced trade (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Nocturrne ( 912399 ) on Wednesday April 26, 2023 @10:18PM (#63479762)

    This says more about the reduction in orders from the US and EU than anything about a rise in RMB use. The Canton Fair last week was completely dead - just a bunch of Chinese people standing around looking at each other, wondering why there were no foreign buyers.

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