【英语】管涛：人民币国际化的黄金窗口期

作者 | 管涛 中银证券全球首席经济学家

来源 | 《CHINA FOREX》ISSUE#34

The steady rise of the RMB's international status has been a defining feature of the evolution of the international monetary system over the past two decades. In terms of relevant market shares, key indicators of RMB internationalization have risen to the forefront globally, but its overall share remains relatively low and is not commensurate with China's economic strength. This reflects the network effects and path dependence inherent in the international monetary system, giving traditional international currencies a natural advantage over emerging ones. However, in recent years, a series of self-destructive actions by the US government have rapidly eroded the credibility of the US dollar, creating a rare window of opportunity for advancing RMB internationalization. To capitalize on this, China needs to focus on three key tasks: consolidating the foundations of the real economy, deepening reforms in capital markets, and advancing the opening-up of the capital account. This will ensure that foreign investors can profit from trading and holding Chinese assets, understand market dynamics, and operate without the risk of capital or foreign exchange controls, ultimately supporting the comprehensive enhancement of the RMB's international functions.

RMB Internationalization: A Critical Window of Opportunity

The current international monetary system is a credit-based structure centered on the US dollar. The US dollar's status reflects the United States' comprehensive national power across political, military, economic, financial, and technological dimensions. Therefore, although the 2007 US subprime mortgage crisis gradually evolved into a global financial tsunami by late 2008, triggering international reflection on the current international monetary system and promoting its multipolar development, the dollar's position remains solid. For example, the US dollar's share in global foreign exchange reserves has declined from around 70% at the beginning of this century to below 60%, but by the end of 2025, it still stood at 56.77%, far above the 20.25% share of the Euro, the second-largest reserve currency during the same period.

However, since 2025, a series of major US policy shifts have abandoned or even undermined the post-war global governance order led by the US.

It has made extensive use of tariffs, undermining the post-war multilateral trade system. In April 2025, citing the need to correct the massive trade deficit, the US government implemented a so-called "reciprocal tariff" policy that imposed varying duties on all imported goods, raising its average import tariff rate to the highest level in nearly a century. After the "reciprocal tariff" policy was declared unconstitutional in early 2026, the US government imposed a 10% temporary tariff under Section 122, while seeking to replace soon-to-expire temporary tariffs with those under Sections 301 and 232. Moreover, the US government has imposed punitive tariffs on imports from other countries under various pretexts. These actions represent a rollback of the free trade and multilateral trade system, which aims to eliminate tariff and non-tariff barriers, leading to the fragmentation of the global economy, widening cracks in the credibility of the US dollar, and triggering a nearly 10% plunge in the US Dollar Index in 2025.

It stokes regional geopolitical conflicts following the "law of the jungle" toward other nations. In 2025, the new US administration conducted military strikes or large-scale operations against at least seven countries. On January 3, 2026, the US entered Venezuela, seized its sitting president, and openly declared that the operation's purpose was to seize local oil resources. On February 28, without the authorization of the United Nations, the US, in coordination with Israel, launched an unannounced strike on Iran, triggering a Middle East war. Disrupting energy supplies and international logistics, causing an energy crisis that has dragged down global economic and trade growth while intensifying financial turbulence worldwide.

US policies exacerbate fiscal imbalances and raise US government debt risks. In July 2025, the US formally enacted comprehensive tax and fiscal reform legislation (also known as the One Big Beautiful Bill Act), with large-scale, permanent corporate tax cuts as one of its core components. At the time, the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) estimated that the legislation would increase the US fiscal deficit by approximately USD 3.4 trillion over the next decade. Now, both the reciprocal tariffs and the fentanyl tariffs have been ruled unconstitutional and revoked, with the US government even required to refund hundreds of billions of dollars in duties already collected from businesses. Recently, the United States Court of International Trade ruled that the 10% temporary tariff also lacks legal basis. Even if the tariff is not formally revoked, it is set to expire in July. Without timely replacement by tariffs under Sections 301 and 232, the US government will face a significant shortfall in revenue. Ray Dalio, founder of Bridgewater Associates, warned that the US fiscal system has not yet suffered a full-blown "heart attack", yet plaque is steadily accumulating — and this prophecy may now ring true.

The US disregards allies' interests and even repeatedly exerts extreme pressure. In March 2025, the US imposed fentanyl tariffs on Canada and Mexico, parties to the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA). In April's reciprocal tariffs, allied countries including the UK, Japan, South Korea, and the EU were also targeted, pressuring them into signing unequal trade agreements with the US. Since the change in administration, the US has repeatedly made territorial claims on Greenland, part of the Kingdom of Denmark, and has even threatened to turn Canada into its 51st state. During the recent military conflict in the Middle East, the US neither consulted its allies beforehand, nor secured their support during the operation. On the contrary, the resulting surge in energy prices has placed immense economic pressure on Asian and European allies that are heavily dependent on Middle Eastern energy imports. Meanwhile, Middle Eastern allies, expecting US military protection, suffered retaliation from Iran, due to the presence of US military bases on their territories, causing significant economic and property losses. Even after the conflict ends, restoring local energy infrastructure will take considerable time.

In response, Western countries have widely lamented that "the rules-based international order no longer exists". Former US Vice President Kamala Harris recently criticized the current administration for openly disregarding and undervaluing the importance of relations with allies, and for allowing the US to abdicate its role as a global defender of international rules and norms, including the protection of sovereignty and territorial integrity. These developments are undermining the international status of the US dollar. For example, by the end of 2025, the US dollar's share in global gold and foreign exchange reserves had fallen by nearly 16 percentage points since the end of 2008, with a 6-percentage-point decline in 2025 alone. Currently, the US dollar's share is only about 13 percentage points higher than that of gold, the second-largest international reserve asset.

At the end of May 2025, Christine Lagarde, the President of the European Central Bank, publicly warned that US policies were eroding the foundations of USD credibility and urged the EU to seize the shifting international financial landscape to actively promote the euro's role as a global currency. In April 2026, ZHOU Xiaochuan, former governor of the People's Bank of China, noted that the current transformation of the international monetary system is driven primarily by US policy choices, potentially creating a "golden window" for RMB internationalization.

Seizing Opportunities: Three Priorities for China

From the perspective of global gold and foreign exchange reserves, the primary beneficiary of the de-dollarization trend since 2022 has been gold rather than other major reserve currencies. This indicates that although the US dollar's dominance is under pressure, no credible alternative currency has yet emerged in the short term. As a Chinese proverb says, "Opportunity favors the prepared." To fully seize the golden window for RMB internationalization, China must not only ride the momentum by expanding the use of the RMB in international trade, investment, and financing, enhancing its functions as an invoicing settlement, investment and financing, and reserve currency, but also focus on the following three key tasks:

Consolidate the foundations of the real economy to ensure that foreign investors can profit from holding Chinese assets. As China accelerates the opening of its capital markets, both RMB-denominated stocks and bonds have been included in major international indices, with their weights gradually increasing. Yet in foreign investors' portfolios, these assets remain under-weighted. This stems not only from geopolitical headwinds but also subpar returns on RMB-denominated assets. To address this, China needs to foster a strong domestic market, unblock bottlenecks in the economic cycle, rectify the imbalance between excess supply and sluggish demand, and align nominal economic growth with actual growth. In the process of accelerating the establishment of a new development pattern, China should promote stable economic growth, allow prices to rise reasonably, and improve corporate profitability. At the same time, China should accelerate high-level technological self-reliance, address structural weaknesses, and promote the deep integration of technological and industrial innovation to build a modern industrial system while maintaining a reasonable share of manufacturing. Efforts should also be made to advance the construction of a unified national market, curb "involution-style" competition, encourage fair and sound competition, and improve the domestic business environment. Additionally, China should strengthen the national security system, continuously enhance security capabilities in key sectors, improve safeguards for energy, resources, and food security, and bolster the resilience of its production and supply chains.

Deepen capital market reforms to make foreign investors feel at home. Due to information asymmetry, investors tend to exhibit a "home bias", allocating their global portfolios only to familiar overseas markets. High-standard opening-up stands as a core pillar of China's high-quality development drive. Institutional opening-up forms the crux of high-standard opening-up, while behind-the-border opening — aligning domestic rules, regulations, standards, and regulatory practices with international norms — constitutes a vital component of institutional opening. The US dollar's hegemony rests on the unmatched depth and liquidity of US financial markets. Though China's stock and bond markets rank second only to those of the US, substantial room remains for further improvement. Going forward, China should leverage the "New Nine Guidelines", a nine-point regulatory framework for comprehensive capital market reform, 1+N policy framework to advance comprehensive capital market reforms that balance financing and investment functions, align core market institutions with global benchmarks or pioneer China-specific institutional solutions, improve market transparency and predictability, and thereby lift the asset market's appeal to overseas investors.

Advance capital account liberalization to facilitate foreign access to China's markets. As noted earlier, many indicators of RMB internationalization now rank among the highest globally. In terms of scale, the RMB is on par with the euro, pound sterling, and Japanese yen as a major international currency (also called a secondary center currency, with the US dollar remaining the sole primary currency). However, overseas holding of RMB requires safe, convertible, and liquid asset vehicles. China has yet to achieve full RMB capital account convertibility, which increases the risk premium for foreign entities investing in and holding RMB-denominated assets. The 15th Five-Year Plan emphasizes "opening China wider to the outside world", calling for the advancement of RMB internationalization and greater capital account opening. This will help gradually remove institutional barriers to RMB internationalization and enhance market acceptance and recognition. It is worth noting that safe asset supply is a key support for RMB internationalization. While China's government bond market has gradually opened to foreign investors, both the supply scale of safe asset and their investment accessibility require further improvement. At the same time, China should coordinate the expansion of capital account liberalization with the facilitation of RMB inflows and outflows under the capital account, thereby enhancing the RMB's investment, financing, and reserve functions.

In recent years, amid recurring external shocks, China's production and supply chains have demonstrated strong resilience, delivering stability and certainty to global trade and economic growth and unlocking huge upside for RMB internationalization. RMB internationalization represents both a natural outcome of ongoing diversification in the global monetary system and an inevitable byproduct of China's deepened reform and opening-up drive. From this standpoint, China need not fixate on sporadic short-term opportunity windows; instead, it should uphold its long-term strategic focus, prioritize domestic reforms, and cushion against global uncertainties through robust high-quality development. Among the three core tasks, shoring up domestic fundamentals and delivering the first two priorities lay the bedrock. The third task ought to progress alongside supporting reforms and risk containment, avoiding hasty liberalization that could trigger setbacks.