17 May 2020

China’s New Crypto-Currency – First Step to Full Dedollarization?

‘We’ll cut off the whole relationship’ – Trump threatened China in a recent Fox-Business interview, suggesting he may cut diplomatic relations with China and thereby saving US$ 500 billion. He didn’t say how, though.

Mr. Trump’s anger referred to what he calls China’s “mismanagement” of the corona crisis. This is consistent with the new China bashing hard line being pushed by his administration. “I’m very disappointed in China,” Trump said during the same Fox interview. “We asked to go over and they said no,” he continued, referring to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s (CDC) February offer of assistance to the virus-stricken city of Wuhan. “They didn’t want our help. And I figured that was OK because they must know what they are doing. So, it was either stupidity, incompetence or deliberate.”

These are strong and unsubstantiated words, since there has never been a clearly documented accusation against China in how precisely China mismanaged the COVID-19 outbreak and is supposedly responsible for the COVID crisis in the US – where real mismanagement, corruption, conflict of interest and particularly pharma-interests, competing private vaccine company interests – are written all over the walls, the walls of shame, falsifying corona statistics, by falsifying death certificates, paying hospitals for declaring any patient a COVID-patient, even if many of them aren’t, and for using ventilators, though it is widely known that ventilators are causing death in 40% to 60% of patients; see this.

Was the virus created in a US bio-weapons lab from where it escaped deliberately or by accident and that patient zero was in the US and that the virus was brought to China in one way or another? President Trump knows it. He also knows about the real mismanagement of the crisis in his country, the United States. But he has always been good at self-promoting propaganda and slandering perceived enemies, as long as he thinks it may help him being reelected.

It is obvious that the US China bashing has nothing to do with China’s “mismanagement” of the corona epidemic, but rather with China’s bold move a step further away from the dollar-economy, by

• First, using the yuan and local currencies boosting trade among the ASEAN+3 countries (Association of Southeast Asian Nations – Brunei, Cambodia, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, Myanmar, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand, and Vietnam; plus 3 = Japan, South Korea and China). Monetary transactions will use the CIPS (Cross-Border Interbank Payment System), avoiding the dollar controlled SWIFT payment scheme. This is mostly to prevent US interference in international monetary transactions – and also in response to the United States’ threat of cutting off Chinese supply chains.

The cutting off supply chains, is of course, sheer bluff, as literally 80 percent-plus of US industries depend in one way or another on supplies from China. This dependence is particularly significant in medical supplies, where the US depends for 80% to 90% on China. But China is China, and President Xi acted fast calling the bluff – and the US may suddenly stand therewith an empty cup, since such supply chains are not replaced overnight.

In the first quarter 2020, ASEAN countries have become China’s largest trading partner with 15.1 %, outpacing the European Union (EU). Trade with South Korea and Japan amounted to another 13.7%, bringing the total close to 30%. Adding China’s trade with Russia, another at least 15%, is getting close to a 50% tipping point of China’s closest partners abandoning commercial transactions in US-dollars.

• Second, by launching a new People’s Bank of China (PBC = China’s Central Bank) controlled crypto-currency for international trade, thereby further circumventing the US-dollar and SWIFT controlled international money transfer system which makes all transactions vulnerable to US interference and sanctions.

China’s new cyber-money, e-RMB (Ren Min Bi, meaning People’s Money), or Yuan, is currently being tested in several Chinese cities, including Shenzhen, Suzhou, Chengdu, and Xiong’an. In these cities it has almost universal acceptance, i.e. for salary payments, public transportation, food and most retail shopping.

The use of digital money is nothing new in China. Today about 90% of all monetary transactions are electronic, for example through WeChat and AliPay, but they do not replace the existing cash currency.

Commodity pricing today mostly dollarized, will be priced by China in yuan and traded in crypto-yuan. Yuan pricing for commodities, such as gold, crude oil and iron ore, has already started. As China is recovering from the pandemic more quickly than the rest of the world, relatively high-returning yuan-denominated investments and commodity assets will become more attractive.

The non-interference factor of a Chinese Central Bank backed crypto-currency is an additional security element that will further boost the Chinese Yuan as a reserve currency. Already now, countries around the globe are sick and tired of US meddling in their international transactions and especially with US sanctions – that may come at a whim – every time a country demonstrates her sovereignty, or disobedience to US dictates. This leads many countries that may not speak out publicly for fear of sanctions, to gradually and quietly divesting their dollar holdings into Chinese yuan.

A tipping point may be reached, when about 50% of world trade and world reserves are denominated in yuan. At this point it would be likely that the worldwide dollar hegemony will be no more, as it may be displaced by the yuan.

 more at Global Research

© Global Research