The writer is founder and chief economist of Enodo Economics and a senior fellow at Asia Society’s Center for China Analysis
作者是Enodo Economics创始人兼首席经济学家，并任亚洲协会(Asia Society)中国分析中心(Center for China Analysis)高级研究员。
When Xi Jinping’s speech on building a powerful financial country was published as formal Communist Party doctrine in January 2026, a predictable debate followed. Can the renminbi challenge the dollar?
2026年1月，当习近平关于建设金融强国的讲话作为中国共产党的正式理论发表时，一场可以预见的争论随之而来：人民币能否挑战美元？
The answer, almost universally, was no. The evidence was largely correct: the renminbi has only 1.9 per cent of global reserves, a share that has barely moved in a decade; China has a closed capital account; and Beijing has a credibility deficit earned through years of arbitrary regulatory intervention. Case closed. But this misses what China is actually doing, why it might matter even if the renminbi never becomes a reserve currency, and what the journey itself does to the cost of staying in the dollar system.
几乎所有人的答案都是否定的。支撑这一判断的证据大体也没错：人民币在全球外汇储备中的占比仅为1.9%，而这一比例十年来几乎没有变化；中国资本项目尚未开放；此外，由于多年来的行政干预，北京方面存在信誉赤字。讨论似乎可以就此“盖棺定论”。但这种看法忽略了中国实际上正在做什么，忽略了即便人民币永远成不了储备货币，这件事为何仍然重要，同时也忽略了这一进程本身将如何推高留在美元体系内的成本。