Commentary
Recently, Xi Jinping of mainland China visited Saudi Arabia, arousing speculation of some new deals to be done. Specifically, some nationalists expect a substantial portion of Saudi oil exported to China to be settled in the Chinese Yuan (CNY) rather than the U.S. dollar. Such wishful thinking is obviously self-defeating by looking at the data: Saudi Arabia has been running a huge trade surplus from China, and they will be accumulating CNY over time without an effective way to channel it back to mainland China. Naturally, that was empty talk.
In deciding whether to accept CNY, another practical consideration is its popularity in usage. To see how one currency penetrates into another country, the best is to refer to the triennial survey done by the Bank for International Settlements (BIS). There are other statistics, such as the SWIFT payments system by currency settled, but the whole globe’s transactions are lumped together without breaking down each country. Although BIS’ survey is done only once every three years where the latest being in April 2022, it breaks things down like an input-output table….