🚨 Historic: China Internationalizes the Gold-Backed Yuan and Payment System for the First Time Ever
For the first time, the People’s Bank of China has explicitly made expanding the RMB’s global role a core priority: More use in trade and investment, stronger offshore markets, better cross-border payment systems, and solidifying Hong Kong as a key hub with physical gold vaults, clearing, and trading infrastructure. State institutions are also heavily bullish on gold.
At the same time, JPMorgan CEO Jamie Dimon just warned that if the U.S. is no longer the world’s strongest economy and military in 25 years, the dollar will lose its reserve-currency status. History shows reserve status follows the dominant power.
Dimon’s point is straightforward: keep the edge or lose the privilege.
China is moving on multiple fronts to challenge that dominance:
• Building gold-linked infrastructure and credibility for the yuan (vaults, trading, physical delivery options) so the currency feels more “hard-asset backed” to the rest of the world.
• Expanding CIPS and pushing the new BRICS payment system (BRICS Pay / Bridge) as a real alternative to SWIFT, allowing countries to settle trade in local currencies without going through the dollar system.
And don’t forget the real-world leverage:
China still dominates the rare-earth supply chain (roughly 70% of mining, over 90% of processing, and the vast majority of permanent magnets). These materials are essential for EVs, wind turbines, defense systems, electronics, and more. That gives Beijing serious bargaining power in any shift away from dollar-centric trade.
None of this means the dollar collapses tomorrow. It still settles the bulk of global trade and holds the majority of reserves.
But the direction of travel is clear: China is systematically building the plumbing (gold, payments, commodities control) for a multipolar currency world, while the U.S. is being told by one of its own top bankers that the clock is running if it loses its edge.
Soon as China banned retail paper gold market, Chinese investors turned to tokenized gold on blockchains.
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