China Sets Trial Run For Digital Yuan in Top City Hubs (nikkei.com) 30
Chinese authorities will expand test use of the country's prototype digital currency across the nation's three leading urban clusters centered on Beijing, Shanghai and the southern cities of Guangzhou, Shenzhen and Hong Kong. From a report: The move, announced by the Ministry of Commerce, expands the coverage area for testing the cyber currency to a potential user base of around 400 million, or 29% of the country's population. It has been trialed since April in four cities with a combined population of 41 million, Work on the digital yuan, which is intended to be interchangeable with the country's paper currency, started more than five years ago but accelerated after Facebook unveiled its Libra digital currency project in June 2019.
Rising concerns that the U.S. could try to throttle China's access to the global dollar-based financial system, amid mounting tensions between Washington and Beijing, have fed further interest in the effort. "The digital yuan as a competitor of the greenback is more of a long-term phenomenon," said Andrew Collier, managing director of financial research company Orient Capital Research in Hong Kong. "Digitalization doesn't address the lack of free convertibility of the yuan," he said. "However the digitalization of the currency and other settlement systems gives an advantage to its (China's) institutions, which will be significant when the currency is liberalized."
Rising concerns that the U.S. could try to throttle China's access to the global dollar-based financial system, amid mounting tensions between Washington and Beijing, have fed further interest in the effort. "The digital yuan as a competitor of the greenback is more of a long-term phenomenon," said Andrew Collier, managing director of financial research company Orient Capital Research in Hong Kong. "Digitalization doesn't address the lack of free convertibility of the yuan," he said. "However the digitalization of the currency and other settlement systems gives an advantage to its (China's) institutions, which will be significant when the currency is liberalized."
Digital currency != cryptocurrency (Score:2)
Despite the messaging that certain types of crypto advocates have been trying to use for years to confuse the public, cryptocurrency is not synonymous with digital currency. Central bank-issued digital currency is just regular currency minus the printed paper.
It is explicitly centralized and traceable and its advocates do not pretend otherwise, unlike cryptocurrency which is propped up on a lot of decentralization hype that is wishful at best and deceitful at worst, and specifically in the case of Bitcoin
Re: Digital currency != cryptocurrency (Score:1)
Impressive (Score:5, Interesting)
China is really interesting. They are assembling some of the right pieces to be the next world power, except for their form of government. This needs to be repeated over, and over, and over: Absolutely nobody wants to deal with a dictatorship except for other dictators. If China's smart, they will keep developing and then sometime in 2030-2040 announce a shift to: a representative form of government, strong rule of law, and strong property rights. If they do that, and the US keeps on its current navel-gazing-head-in-ass trajectory, then we're looking at fundamental shift in world-leadership.
On the other hand, if China stays a dictatorship/oligarchy for the long haul, they will plateau somewhere around the GDP-per-capita of Russia at the height of the soviet union and then start a slow decline. Very few countries will actually be friendly and they will have a hard time keeping high performers inside their borders.
The ball is currently in China's court. Personally, I'm pessimistic that the leaders over there will willingly give up direct control. One can always hope. A representative government that large would be the biggest jump in human enlightenment since the US was founded.
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People there already use AliPay and WeChat Pay extensively, so digital currency is not at all foreign to them.
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...and then tracked every penny everywhere it went, to see what dissidents were up to, so they could be squashed at leisure.
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Re: Impressive (Score:1)
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Absolutely nobody wants to deal with a dictatorship except for other dictators.
I would disagree with this point, as corporations absolutely love dictators. If we continue to allow corporations to run roughshod over actual human citizens it won't be too long before the corporate-owned press corpse starts to enshrine the Chinese government as the model of the future.
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China will be the next great world power. There is no *if* about it.
The question is will there be another great world power, or will the world just become China-adjacent.
-The Soviet Union fell, leaving Russia as but a shadow.
-The USA is fading, although we still have an enormous military and a stranglehold on the world economy -for now.
-If the European Union can stop bickering and come together as a unified power they can be the alternative to China.
No other government has the strength and stability to cha
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I would agree that China *MIGHT* be the next world power, IF THEY CHANGE THEIR GOVERNMENT. To repeat my original post: nobody really wants to work with a dictatorship except for other dictators. With all due respect, Xi has dictatorial power. That makes China a dictatorship, regardless of what's on paper. As long as they keep this type of government, they will NEVER be a world leader.
Re: Impressive (Score:3)
Sorry, but Chinas rising power is because of their strong government and the culture that accepts it. I do not want that to be true, but there it is. While US is gridlocked on everything and unable to act, China enrolls 400 million in their next experiment, and it is done. This is behind their economic rise and it wont stop. It is not old school Marxism, its their own blend they have evolved over time, and its working. Meanwhile if we advocate coming up with anything similar in the US that holds onto cons
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- they bankrupt themselves soviet style. Seems unlikely in the next couple of decades at least
- they lose a major war like the germans in WW 1&2
No one gives up power willingly and it is highly unlikely the Chinese will rise and make the reform by themselves at this point.
BTW, I think China should be broken up like - Tibet, Taiwan, Honk Kong, Xinjiang (Uighurs province), Makao and probably others should be independent. Inner Mo
Re: Impressive (Score:2)
Yeah, and China continues to move forwards in many respects. It is not finished . Democracy as seen in many countries is mostly an illusion and a cover for much the same authoritarian effect. The skill will be making one that isn't just a vinere designed to acquiesce the populace and actually does have a positive effect in line with the desires of the population. They allow experiments to happen every now and again, but little positive comes from them, as it typical with fledgling democratic efforts. They s
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Fucking hell you're boring.
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What's the difference? (Score:2)
Re: What's the difference? (Score:2)
That's a good question. Clearly there must be a difference else they would not bother.
Perhaps they plan for it to not be 1:1 linked at some point, but how is that different to just making another currency? Perhaps it isn't much different, just easier - there's no pretence on there being actual physical monetary assets being moved around behind the scenes, which surely does happen at some point in some way with non-digital currency.
Perhaps existing currency has some baggage that is difficult to shed, and a n
What's the point? (Score:1)
Good (Score:2)
The sooner a stop is put to the US advantage and its manipulation the better.