Will the Renminbi Become a Top International Currency Any Time Soon?

Deep End Era. Engineering with Sankalp · Oct 29, 2026 · 1h 6m

China is the world's largest merchandise exporter, the largest trading partner for over 120 countries, and accounts for roughly 18 percent of global GDP. Yet in the International Monetary Fund's Currency Composition of Official Foreign Exchange Reserves (COFER), the renminbi accounts for just over 2 percent of allocated global reserves—trailing not only the US dollar (~58%) and the euro (~20%), but also the Japanese yen and the British pound—and even after surging past 50 percent in China's own bilateral cross-border trade settlement after 2022, it remains virtually absent as a third-party…