Pan Gongsheng, the Governor of the People's Bank of China, announced today (18th) plans to establish a digital yuan international operation center in Shanghai to expand the global influence of the yuan. He pointed out that stablecoins and central bank digital currencies (CBDCs) are reshaping global payment infrastructure.
At the 2025 Lujiazui Forum, Pan Gongsheng stated that the new digital yuan center aims to promote the international operation and development of financial market businesses of the digital yuan, serving digital financial innovation. This initiative is one of the eight key financial policies he announced at the forum.
The digital yuan is widely regarded as one of the most advanced CBDCs globally. Despite the Chinese government's introduction of several supporting measures since the pilot program began in 2019, the adoption of the digital yuan still faces challenges.
In his keynote speech, Pan Gongsheng pointed out that the application of emerging technologies in the field of cross-border payments is accelerating, including blockchain and distributed ledger technology (DLT). He stated:
"Emerging technologies such as blockchain and distributed ledger are driving the vigorous development of central bank digital currencies and stablecoins, achieving 'payment as settlement', fundamentally reshaping the traditional payment system, significantly shortening the cross-border payment chain, while also posing enormous challenges to financial regulation. Technologies such as smart contracts and decentralized finance will continue to drive the evolution and development of the cross-border payment system."
Pan Gongsheng stated that as one of the eight policies proposed today, Shanghai plans to pilot a series of structural monetary policy tools, including blockchain-based trade finance tools. At the same time, he also warned about the inadequacy of regulation in the crypto asset field:
"Some emerging fields such as digital finance are inadequately regulated. For example, there is a lack of global regulatory coordination for the rapidly expanding crypto asset market and climate risk-related regulatory frameworks, with regulatory orientations swinging drastically and being overly driven by politics; the application of artificial intelligence in the financial sector lacks unified regulatory standards. The world needs to strengthen regulatory cooperation and fill regulatory gaps."
Although Chinese authorities have always actively embraced blockchain technology, the People's Bank of China rarely publicly discusses the financial impact of decentralized finance (DeFi) and stablecoins. China currently still prohibits cryptocurrency trading and mining activities domestically.
The remarks of the Governor of the People's Bank of China come after the U.S. Senate passed a key stablecoin regulatory bill on Tuesday, which will be further reviewed by the House of Representatives. U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent has stated that stablecoin legislation will 'create a market that can expand the use of the dollar globally through these stablecoins', and he believes that a stablecoin market size of two trillion dollars is 'a very reasonable figure'.
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