China’s central bank digital currency (CBDC): an assessment of money and power relations

ABSTRACT This article reflects on the meaning of China’s Central Bank Digital Currency (CDBC) with respect to money and power relations to argue that it will not represent a rupture with the dollar centric international monetary and financial system (IMFS). It combines three theoretical approaches – on the nature of money, on currency internationalisation and on currency hierarchy – to build an analytical framework that adds to the literature that strives to understand the dynamics between money and state power. This framework stresses the fundamental place of currency dominance and of an underlying currency hierarchy that explains the broader configuration and evolution of the IMFS. While there is an enormous asymmetry between the economic weight of China and the international use of its currency (physical or digital), it does not necessarily follow that this tension will be resolved by assembling a fairer distribution of the economic and political advantages that come along with issuing a currency that is used by the rest of the world (the so-called ‘exorbitant privilege’).