China Continues CBDC Rollout

The People’s Bank of China has recently announced that their central bank digital currency (CBDC), the digital yuan, is now available for use in 23 cities.

China’s digital currency pilot program has recently expanded to 5 more cities as the nation elevates the trial phase of their highly anticipated CBDC. Yi Gang, Governor of the PBoC, stated during a press conference that the Chinese government as a whole has come together to support the program and that it has “dynamically improved the business technology design and continued to build on innovative application scenarios while focusing on solving financial service difficulties.”

Gang commented on the success of the rollout during the 2022 Beijing Winter Olympics, where “the number of users, merchants, and transactions participating in the pilot program has grown steadily” since the games and that the general market has responded well. The new digital currency was used to transact over 2 million yuan ($315,000) every day during the international event.

While China is not the first country to launch a central bank issued digital currency, its size in terms of economic activity and population has led to many viewing the pilot program as a test of how a digital currency could be implemented in a major population. CBDCs certainly can be a cause for concern regarding the possible invasion of privacy through constant financial surveillance offered through centralized digital services, but the ongoing digitization of our everyday lives suggests that a digital currency may be the thing that is suddenly “online”.