Blockchain ambitions: will China get the first-mover advantage with the wide adoption of the digital yuan?
- China has moved deliberately to secure first-mover advantage in what it believes is the future of the internet
- If the digital yuan is Beijing’s tender for the digital frontier, its blockchain initiative is its bid to build the railroads
In the first instalment of a three-part series produced with support from the Judith Neilson Institute for Journalism and Ideas, Forkast.News looks at China’s twin ambitions to launch a digital yuan and the next generation of the internet. Parts two and three will be published on June 29 and 30th.
In February, China is expected to use the Beijing Winter Olympics to unveil a home-grown marvel of intense international interest: the digital yuan, the first major central bank digital currency, or CBDC.
“The question is not whether China’s CBDC will upend the current rules of global trade and commerce,” said Pauline Loong, director of Hong Kong-based research consultancy Asia-Analytica. “The only question is how far-reaching the ramifications will be across issues related to who controls access to capital and its movements.”
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Blockchain in Asia: China Bets on Blockchain
But for all of the digital yuan’s consequences, it is a toe peeking out from a giant red curtain. Behind is an ambitious and largely invisible infrastructure programme to rewire the country and its economy with distributed ledger technology known as blockchain. China has moved deliberately to secure first-mover advantage in what it believes is the future of the internet.
