If China is not seeking to dethrone the dollar, it is nevertheless seeking to make its use less essential. For several years, Beijing has been investing massively in a new generation of financial infrastructure based on the digital yuan and on cross-border settlement networks designed to operate outside the traditional circuits dominated by the United States.
By the end of 2025, China’s digital yuan had crossed the threshold of 16.7 trillion yuan in cumulative transactions, or approximately $2.3 trillion. Meanwhile, mBridge, the cross-border settlement platform powered by central bank digital currencies, has already processed more than 4,000 transactions worth nearly $55.5 billion.
If taken in isolation, these figures do not threaten the domination of the dollar, together they nevertheless reveal a coherent strategy where China is gradually building the financial infrastructure of a world in which international trade no longer systematically passes through American rails.
This development is often analyzed from a monetary perspective, but it is more of an infrastructure logic. As in semiconductors, the cloud, energy or artificial intelligence, Beijing seeks to master the technical layers that allow the system to function. The issue is who will control the networks on which the money will circulate.
Behind the dollar, infrastructure
To understand Chinese strategy, we must first understand what Beijing is really trying to circumvent. When we talk about “American rails”, we are not talking about a single infrastructure. The expression refers to all the technological, financial and legal layers that allow international payments to circulate.
Today, when a Brazilian company buys oil from a Saudi company or when an Asian industrialist pays a European supplier in dollars, the money does not pass directly from one bank account to another. Transactions generally pass through several intermediaries: correspondent banks, financial messaging networks, clearing infrastructures and institutions with direct access to the US financial system.
This architecture has been built gradually since the end of the Second World War, and today constitutes one of the main levers of economic power of the United States.
The domination of the dollar is thus based on four complementary layers:
The first is the currency itself, a considerable part of international trade continues to be denominated in dollars, including when the United States is not involved in the transaction.
The second layer is the correspondent banks, to make international payments in dollars, many foreign banks still depend on establishments with direct access to the American financial system.
The third layer concerns the clearing and settlement infrastructures that process trillions of dollars of transactions every day.
Finally, the fourth layer is legal, as long as a transaction passes through the dollar system, it can fall under US jurisdiction, even when both parties involved are located outside the United States. It is in particular this mechanism which allows the extraterritorial application of numerous financial sanctions.
This distinction is essential, because China is not necessarily trying to convince the world to abandon the dollar. Its objective is more pragmatic by creating infrastructures allowing certain international exchanges to operate without systematically depending on American correspondent banks, American clearing infrastructures or American financial jurisdiction.
In other words, Beijing considers it easier to build alternative roads than to replace the dominant currency.
The digital yuan becomes an infrastructure tool
Long presented as a technological experiment, e-CNY has gradually become a permanent component of the Chinese financial architecture.
The digital yuan is not intended to replace Alipay or WeChat Pay, the dominant platforms in daily use. The objective pursued by the authorities is to have a public digital payment infrastructure directly connected to the banking system.
The digital yuan is already used in the payment of certain public aid, tax refunds, social benefits or consumer pilot programs. A new governance and assessment framework came into effect in early 2026 to more deeply integrate e-CNY into the national financial system.
Authorities are also experimenting with mechanisms allowing certain digital yuan deposits to earn interest, a sign that the People’s Bank of China no longer views e-CNY as a simple pilot project but as a sustainable component of its monetary architecture.
As cash payments decline, the digital yuan offers the state a sovereign payment rail whose main components it controls. This development not only meets domestic objectives, it also prepares the ground for international uses.
mBridge, from laboratory to infrastructure
This is precisely the ambition of mBridge, the project was born from a cooperation between several central banks to experiment with the use of central bank digital currencies in cross-border settlements.
The idea is to enable financial institutions to settle international transactions in real time without systematically relying on traditional correspondent banking mechanisms.
The first tests carried out in 2022 concerned limited volumes. At the time, fewer than 200 transactions worth about $22 million had been completed. Three years later, the scale has changed dramatically.
By the end of 2025, the platform had already processed more than 4,000 transactions representing approximately $55.5 billion. According to data published by participants, more than 95% of volumes were settled in digital yuan.
The withdrawal of the Bank of International Settlements from the operational governance of the project at the end of 2024 constitutes an important turning point. It marks the transition from a research experiment to an infrastructure intended for real uses.
The platform has already reached a new milestone. In late 2025, the United Arab Emirates completed a government transaction through mBridge, demonstrating that the system could be used in official operations and no longer just for technical testing.
While mBridge does not constitute a global alternative in the short term, it demonstrates that a parallel settlement architecture can work.
Build corridors rather than conquer the world
Contrary to some alarmist analyses, Beijing does not seem to be seeking to impose the digital yuan on the entire planet. The objective pursued is to develop specific trade corridors in which the use of dollar-dominated infrastructure becomes optional.
This logic appears particularly in exchanges between China, the Gulf countries, certain Asian economies and several partners of the New Silk Roads. For the companies concerned, the advantages are concrete with the reduction of intermediaries, the acceleration of settlements, the reduction of transaction costs and the permanent availability of infrastructures.
The digital yuan then becomes less of a currency and more of a settlement protocol. The history of networks shows that infrastructures are rarely distributed universally from their launch. They generally progress corridor by corridor, use by use, market by market. Chinese strategy seems to follow this logic.
Energy as a field for expansion
Energy could constitute one of the main vectors for disseminating this strategy. Historically, the international role of the dollar has relied largely on global hydrocarbon trade. Energy flows remain one of the pillars of international finance today.
However, mBridge managers now explicitly mention regulations linked to international trade, raw materials and energy as priority use cases. China is therefore exploring the possibility of creating alternative circuits for some of these exchanges. It is not a question of replacing the petrodollar overnight. On the other hand, the gradual multiplication of energy regulations carried out via alternative infrastructures could help to reduce the dependence of certain players on traditional circuits.
The transformation would be gradual, with a few contracts today, regional corridors tomorrow, and specialized networks in the longer term.
Dedollarization could thus start with infrastructure before affecting the currencies themselves.
Three visions of the future of money
This development highlights three distinct approaches.
The United States favors a model based on private innovation, where stablecoins gradually appear as a digital extension of the dollar driven by technology and financial companies. The American strategy is less about building a public digital currency than about letting the market diffuse the dollar in a new form.
China, for its part, favors a logic of sovereignty, where infrastructures are designed as strategic assets integrated into a broader industrial, technological and geopolitical policy.
Europe, for its part, is adopting a more defensive approach. Debates around the digital euro mainly aim to preserve the existence of a public currency in an environment dominated by private platforms and foreign infrastructure.
Behind sometimes similar technologies hide profoundly different visions of the role of money.
An infrastructure battle before a currency battle
It would be premature to announce the decline of the dollar. No other currency today benefits from a financial ecosystem comparable to that of the United States. American markets remain the center of gravity of the global monetary system and Treasury bonds remain the benchmark asset of international finance.
But the question raised by the digital yuan and by mBridge concerns the diversification of infrastructures. For several decades, globalization has been based on networks largely dominated by the United States. China is now applying to finance the strategy it is already pursuing in semiconductors, telecommunications, the cloud or artificial intelligence by seeking to reduce critical dependencies and build its own capabilities.
The post-dollar world will probably not resemble a world without a dollar; on the other hand, it could become a world in which the dollar remains dominant without being systematically indispensable.
It is precisely this perspective that today gives the digital yuan and mBridge a scope that goes far beyond the monetary question. It marks the emergence of a new competition, no longer just to control currencies, but to control the infrastructures that allow currencies to circulate.
