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Sylvia Ma

China should leverage its massive buying power to boost imports settled in yuan and shift towards a more balanced trade structure, to accelerate the currency’s global use, according to a former central bank adviser.
The proposal signals a potential opportunity for the yuan’s internationalisation, years after Beijing kicked off the process in 2009 by allowing selected exporters to be paid in the Chinese currency.
“China is the world’s largest goods exporter, but the yuan’s international standing still lags far behind,” said Liu Shijin, a former vice-minister at the Development Research Centre of the State Council, according to a report by the state-owned Securities Times.
Speaking at a Peking University forum on Saturday, Liu, a former member of the People’s Bank of China’s Monetary Policy Committee, urged the country to significantly narrow this gap during the 15th five-year planning period (2026-2030). He noted that, while maintaining export competitiveness, China should also increase the share of imports settled in yuan.
Liu’s comments, which echoed similar remarks he made a couple of months ago, have taken on renewed significance amid the yuan’s recent steady appreciation and growing concerns over the US dollar due to policy uncertainty under US President Donald Trump. The worries have been exacerbated by Washington’s recent moves over Greenland and pressure on US allies.
A strong currency is marked by a large share of imports settled in the home currency, Liu said on Saturday, adding that with China’s population roughly four times that of the United States, it should be fully possible for China to build a consumer market far larger.
As the world’s major buyer of energy and raw materials, China is a vital market for foreign producers, given that more than 400 million of its 1.4 billion people are considered middle class. Last year, the country imported US$2.58 trillion worth of goods, according to official data.
About 13.7 trillion yuan (US$1.97 trillion) of China’s cross-border goods trade was settled in yuan last year, a year-on-year increase of 10.7 per cent, accounting for about 30 per cent of the country’s total foreign trade, according to the PBOC. The central bank did not provide breakdowns, but settlement is widely believed to concentrate on exports.
In a sign of this strategic pivot, state-owned China Mineral Resources Group reportedly asked major domestic buyers to pause purchases of new US dollar-denominated seaborne cargoes from Australian mining giant BHP in September.


Since launching cross-border yuan trade settlements 17 years ago, Beijing has taken steps to further internationalise the Chinese currency, especially amid growing concerns over Washington’s use of the dollar as a geopolitical tool.
In October, the PBOC adopted a more proactive stance, pledging to “promote the internationalisation of the yuan” while dropping the qualifiers “prudently and steadily” that had been used for years – a move observers said could signal stronger efforts to globalise the currency.
Those efforts have been paying off, as the yuan’s share of global payments rose from 0.29 per cent at the end of 2011 to 2.94 per cent in November 2025, after peaking at 4.74 per cent in July 2024, according to data from the Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication. However, it still lagged far behind the US dollar, which accounted for 46.77 per cent of global payments in November.
Separately, the PBOC set the yuan’s midpoint rate, also known as the daily fixing rate, at 7.0014 to the US dollar on Wednesday. This rate, along with Tuesday’s 7.0006, represented the strongest fixings since May 2023.
Liu’s comments on Saturday reiterated his views shared at the International Forum on China’s Economy and Policy in November, suggesting that the country should move towards a more balanced trade structure and increase imports settled in yuan, using its market size to cultivate greater acceptance of the Chinese currency in global trade.
However, the latest official data pointed to a widening trade imbalance for the world’s second-largest economy, which posted a record goods trade surplus of US$1.19 trillion for 2025.
Beyond the yuan flowing abroad through import payments, China also needs to match this with a robust offshore investment market to attract the currency back, creating a circulation loop, Liu said at the November forum.


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With the yuan’s fixing at fresh 2023 highs and US dollar uncertainty rising under Trump, Beijing is urged to expand yuan-settled imports to internationalise its currency


With the yuan’s fixing at fresh 2023 highs and US dollar uncertainty rising under Trump, Beijing is urged to expand yuan-settled imports to internationalise its currency.
