Mike Smith
Apr 11
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Amid rising trade tensions between the world’s leading economies, China is aggressively promoting its central digital currency (CBDC), the electronic yuan (e-CNY). This comes at a time when the traditional yuan is under severe pressure in foreign exchange markets.
The People’s Bank of China (PBOC) has launched a series of measures to stabilize the situation, including currency interventions and a large-scale information campaign dedicated to the achievements of the digital currency.
According to official data from the PBOC, the number of personal e-CNY wallets increased from 180 million to 800 million in the nine-month period ending March 11, 2025. The volume of transactions in the digital yuan increased by 45%, reaching 10.2 trillion yuan from the previous figure of 7 trillion.
This information is spreading against the backdrop of the tightening of US trade policy towards China. While the Trump administration has reduced tariffs for many countries, duties on Chinese imports have been steadily increasing: first to 104%, then to 125%, and have now reached 145%.
Beijing immediately responded with mirror tariff measures. At the same time, the PBOC instructed financial institutions to reduce purchases of the American currency. However, these steps could not prevent the fall of the yuan, which fell to a 17-year low of 7.3498 yuan per dollar.
Amid these circumstances, the Chinese authorities are actively publicizing the successes of their digital currency. However, many experts treat the published statistics with a degree of skepticism, given the tendency of Chinese state media to embellish reports, especially during periods of economic instability.
It is worth noting that since its inception, e-CNY has raised concerns in the crypto community due to the potential for total control over the financial transactions of citizens. Most e-wallets in mainland China are tightly linked to users' digital IDs.
Despite this, the PBOC continues to expand the functionality of e-CNY by introducing QR code payments, offline transactions, and expanding the use of the digital currency to new regions and areas, including public transportation.
