IMF to Make Chinese Yuan Reserve Currency in Historic Move

THE SUNDAY TELEGRAPH: Renminbi will join basket of elite currencies including dollar, pound, euro and yen

The International Monetary Fund is to give the yuan a historic vote of confidence on Monday when it includes the Chinese currency in its elite club of major currencies.

The yuan, also known as the renminbi, is widely expected to be added to the IMF’s group of international reserve currencies after an IMF meeting held by its managing director Christine Lagarde.

It comes after lengthy efforts by Chinese officials to legitimise the yuan, which critics say has been kept artificially cheap to artificially boost exports in the world’s second-largest economy.

China has lobbied hard for the currency to be included in the list, which at present is made up of just the dollar, the euro, the pound and the Japanese yen. The list has not been altered since 2000, when the euro replace[d] the franc and deutschmark. Read on and comment » | James Titcomb | Sunday, November 29, 2015

China’s Yuan: The Next Reserve Currency?
SPIEGELONLINE INTERNATIONAL: Skeptics have dismissed Beijing's talk of de-emphasizing the US dollar, but China is making moves that could soon lead to a convertible yuan.

Are the Chinese finally getting serious about loosening their ties to the dollar -- and even replacing the greenback with the yuan as the global economy's reserve currency? The evidence is mounting that they are.

For the last two months, China's leadership has been complaining about the country's dangerous dependence on the dollar.. Beijing holds $2 trillion (€1.43 trillion) in dollar assets, accumulated through years of exports to America and massive purchases of Treasuries by the Chinese government. If Washington can't rein in its mounting budget deficit, both Treasuries and the greenback could weaken considerably -- and the Chinese could be big losers as a result.

The Chinese began generating attention on the issue in March, when Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao said he was worried that the country's dollar assets could slide. Ten days later Chinese central bank chief Zhou Xiaochuan suggested replacing the dollar as the international reserve currency. One idea, Zhou said, was to replace the dollar with a basket of currencies supervised by the International Monetary Fund. >>> © SPIEGEL ONLINE 2009 | Tuesday, May 26, 2009

LeVine is a correspondent in BusinessWeek's Washington bureau.