Why China’s Yuan Can’t Replace the U.S. Dollar

It would take years for the yuan to unwind the dollar’s well-entrenched dominance over global transactions.

Now that Washington and Beijing have reached a compromise on trade, currency concerns have re-emerged. The worry (or hope, depending on the publication or podcast) is that China’s yuan will supplant the dollar as the premier global currency. Beijing certainly likes the idea of the yuan becoming the preferred means of exchange for bankers and currency traders.

For years, Chinese policy has strived to raise the yuan’s international stature. However, the yuan still has a long way to go to supplant the dollar, and it is far from apparent that the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) obsession with control will ever allow the changes needed for that to happen.

Of course, there is no denying that the U.S. economy and the dollar have long since lost the overwhelming dominance they once held. That is clearly a consideration that every nation on earth has taken into account. But in this matter, comparative differences matter more than absolute dominance. The dollar, for all the decline fall from its former strength, remains the only currency that has all the characteristics needed to serve as a global reserve. That is especially true when compared to China’s yuan.

Beijing has done much to raise the yuan’s international stature, actions that have rightly captured media attention. Indeed, Beijing has strived to create what some have called a “Sino-centric system.” China demands yuan-based trade and capital flows in large parts of its far-flung Belt and Road Initiative (BRI). It has created an Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank that deals with yuan-based loans and transfers. Beijing successfully pressed the International Monetary Fund (IMF) to include the yuan among currencies it offers through “special drawing rights.” The People’s Bank of China (PBOC) has added to this effort by promoting a digital yuan.

But all this effort has barely moved the needle against the dollar’s use in international transactions. Some 80 percent of global trade is conducted in dollars, even when Americans are not involved. The dollar lies on one side or the other in some 90 percent of all currency transactions. In contrast, the yuan is present in a mere 4 percent of such transactions, and even the euro can claim only a 30 percent share. The conversion of Egyptian pounds into yuan, for instance, typically occurs via the dollar. So, too, most other currencies.

These well-entrenched relationships have taken years to develop, and it would take years to unwind in the yuan’s favor. Moreover, the yuan has two other disadvantages in its quest to supplant the dollar. China’s financial markets have neither liquidity nor what financial people call market depth, which is needed for the role of global reserve.

Liquidity is essential. Importers, exporters, and their financial support demand the global currency to be able to trade seven days a week, twenty-four hours a day. Their business demands that kind of convenience and flexibility. The dollar offers it. The yuan does not. Then, there is the size of dollar-based financial markets. The overwhelming amount of dollar assets outstanding and the huge trading flows that go on all the time mean that people can move huge sums with minimal effect on the prices of either currencies or financial assets. Dollar-based markets offer this. Yuan-based markets do not.

Because global trade and finance demands that people hold deposits and assets in the reserve currency, they also seek a variety of financial instruments to choose from, some short-term, for example, some long-term, and some offering derivatives that allow hedges against volatility. Again, dollar-based markets offer such a variety in abundance; Yuan-based markets are unable to compete.

Though yuan-based markets could develop such levels of liquidity and depth over time, there is still another major impediment. In order to accomplish this, China’s authorities—the CCP— would have to abandon their obsession with control. The People’s Bank of China (PBOC) would have to end its present insistence on keeping the yuan’s foreign exchange value within a tight range and allow it to float freely on global markets.

To offer people the ability to buy and sell assets and currencies easily with a minimum of price disruption, Beijing would need to give up its present insistence on controlling capital and investment flows into and out of the country as well as its insistence on restricting what financial institutions can do business in China.

Such necessary change is not just contrary to current Chinese practice. It is antithetical to the CCP’s approach to governance. If not impossible, such changes certainly are not likely. The dollar’s premier status will certainly face challenges in time, but the yuan does not threaten as yet and does not look as if it ever will.

• Milton Ezrati is a contributing editor at The National Interest, an affiliate of the Center for the Study of Human Capital at the University at Buffalo (SUNY), and chief economist for Vested, the New York-based communications firm. His latest books are Thirty Tomorrows: The Next Three Decades of Globalization, Demographics, and How We Will Live and Bite-Sized Investing

Source: https://nationalinterest.org/feature/why-chinas-yuan-cant-replace-the-u-s-dollar