The digital yuan is primarily intended for the public and merchants, not to replace SWIFT or weaponize the currency. This was stated by the former head of the People's Bank of China Zhou Xiaochuan.
The expert emphasized that e-CNY is not necessarily suitable for cross-border payments. For such purposes, it may be adapted in the future, but in this case, CBDC will still be focused on retail applications.
“The world should beware of thinking in a Cold War paradigm that will harm everyone,” Zhou said.
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China has been testing the digital yuan for three years. At the end of 2021, the volume of transactions with e-CNY reached 87.57 billion yuan (~$13.68 billion), and 261 million unique digital wallets were registered.In February 2021, the Central Banks of China and the UAE joined the “bridge” project for national digital currencies launched by the regulators of Hong Kong and Thailand.
In April 2022, the People's Bank of China expanded the e-CNY testing program to 23 cities.