This lecture discusses the evolution of Renminbi internationalization (RMBI) as a process and how it has been studied in the political economy and economics scholarship. The process of RMBI, or the making of China’s national currency into an international currency, was officially launched by China’s government fifteen years ago, in late-2008, and the RMB has seen gradually increasing global use henceforth. The presentation starts with assessing whether or to what degree the established literature has adequately addressed the actual outcomes, prospects and limits of RMBI. It highlights what is missing in the analysis of RMBI, heretofore, specifically the examination of the preconditions and key agency for the RMB to function as an international currency. The discussion then turns to the relevant global ‘game changing’ developments which have emerged in the last decade at the world order level, and that need to be integrated into assessing the potential for RMBI. The two game changers to be featured are the development of the digital RMB and central bank digital currencies; and the fracturing of the global monetary and financial order and the simultaneous transition to a more multi-polar global monetary system. Both of these factors have emerged in the decade since the preliminary literature on RMBI was published.

Gregory T. Chin is Associate Professor in the Department of Politics and Faculty of Graduate Studies, York University (Canada). He co-directs the Emerging Global Governance (EGG) Project with Global Policy journal. Chin is a Senior Fellow of the “Global China Program” at the Global Development Policy Center at Boston University, and of the Foreign Policy Institute of The Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies. He has published widely on the political economy of China and international money and development finance, Asia, BRICS and global governance. He is a former Co-Editor of Review of International Political Economy (RIPE), and on the Advisory or Editorial Boards of RIPE, Global Governance journal, and The Journal of East Asian Studies. He is the coauthor of the forthcoming book, China and the Emerging Global Economic Order, Cambridge University Press (with Kevin P. Gallagher). From 2000 to 2006, Chin served in the Government of Canada, in the Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade, the Canadian International Development Agency, and the Canadian Embassy in Beijing.