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Europe’s central banks are starting to replace dollar reserves with the yuan

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Re: Europe’s central banks are starting to replace dollar reserves with the yuan

#21

Post by clacke2 »

linkmotif wrote: post #10
xir78 wrote: post #3

A few years ago I couldn’t tell you the name of a Chinese company off the top of my head, now I can not only rattle of a list, they’re companies I’ve worked with or have significant investments in companies in the US. I also have a roster of WeChat contacts. I also work with multiple ex-pats that fled fearing for their life due to persecution based on their religion (Falung Gong), and laugh at how freaked people are…

If it makes sense, would you please elaborate the connection between these two thoughts?

1. China is gaining in relevance. 2. People don't understand that they should worry about this.

Re: Europe’s central banks are starting to replace dollar reserves with the yuan

#22

Post by sarchertech »

eksemplar wrote: post #4

We really should up the place of Chinese in our school systems as well. Especially with Brexit in mind. There is really no reason for it to be native > English > German/French > Chinese anymore.

Chinese is many times harder to learn than the other languages you mentioned for Native English speakers.

It takes about 4 times as long as French and Spanish to become proficient.

Given the amount of time kids spend on foreign languages in school, there's no way they're learning enough Mandarin to be useful.

I took Mandarin as an undergrad, and I can understand more Spanish despite having never studied it.

Re: Europe’s central banks are starting to replace dollar reserves with the yuan

#23

Post by a3n »

jhoechtl wrote: post #9

Do yourself a favour and call it by it's name: the curreny is called Renminbi

"Yuan" is to Renminbi as "dollar" is to USD.

Also interesting (to me) is that yuan, yen and won are all units based on the word for "round," in China, Japan and Korea(s) respectively. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japanese_yen#Pronunciation_and...

Similar etymological relationships for "dollar," and "thaler" units: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thaler

Re: Europe’s central banks are starting to replace dollar reserves with the yuan

#24

Post by AstralStorm »

sarchertech wrote: post #22
eksemplar wrote: post #4

We really should up the place of Chinese in our school systems as well. Especially with Brexit in mind. There is really no reason for it to be native > English > German/French > Chinese anymore.

Chinese is many times harder to learn than the other languages you mentioned for Native English speakers. It takes about 4 times as long as French and Spanish to become proficient. Given the amount of time kids spend on foreign languages in school, there's no way they're learning enough Mandarin to be useful. I took Mandarin as an undergrad, and I can understand more Spanish despite having never studied it.

Too late. Mandarin and Chinese in general requires a slightly different way of thinking that is better and way more easily absorbed when young.

10k ideograms is not that hard compared to say 7k words needed to have basic fluency in English. You would need about twice as much to be considered reasonably fluent. Grammar is relatively easy, proper pronunciation is much more critical than in English.

Re: Europe’s central banks are starting to replace dollar reserves with the yuan

#25

Post by tanilama »

tim333 wrote: post #2

Well China's now the world's largest economy by PPP GDP [1] so it makes some kind of sense. I'm not sure how freely convertible the Yuan is though. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_(PPP)

Another, maybe more significant statistic, China has equaled or surpassed US, in terms the size of retail market, as the first country ever did that in the past 100 years.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2018/01/11/the-c...

That is a more relevant data point of its buying power right now, and potential impact it would have on other economies, if China decides to use its market as a weapon.

Re: Europe’s central banks are starting to replace dollar reserves with the yuan

#27

Post by tanilama »

jv22222 wrote: post #16

Is this shift in any way related to Trump, or would it be happening right about now anyways?

Trump is definitely an issue. His talk about abandoning NATO, ridiculing EU to drive his own argument for domestic issues, makes him pretty hard to be likable from EU establishments' perspectives.

On the least insignificant level, the message is pretty clear: US is destabilizing, and Trump might only be the beginning of it. With a isolationist and hostile US government, EU naturally would seek another anchor for safety, which is China, to counter balance it.

Re: Europe’s central banks are starting to replace dollar reserves with the yuan

#28

Post by latch »

clacke2 wrote: post #21
linkmotif wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If it makes sense, would you please elaborate the connection between these two thoughts?

1. China is gaining in relevance. 2. People don't understand that they should worry about this.

1. Like many countries, China has long been relevant. Like many countries, China has long been gaining relevance.

2. Because they shouldn't

If instead of treating global economy as a zero-sum game, and if we backed off from the fear mongering and admitted that China's economic growth has largely (and unsurprisingly) been to most people's benefits, then we'd welcome the competition and innovation and productivity that China has and will continue to provide.

Re: Europe’s central banks are starting to replace dollar reserves with the yuan

#29

Post by lloeki »

clacke2 wrote: post #21
linkmotif wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If it makes sense, would you please elaborate the connection between these two thoughts?

1. China is gaining in relevance. 2. People don't understand that they should worry about this.

> Laissez donc la Chine dormir, car lorsque la Chine s'éveillera le monde entier tremblera

> Let China thusly slumber, for when China wakes up the world will shiver

— Napoleon 1er

Re: Europe’s central banks are starting to replace dollar reserves with the yuan

#30

Post by mtgx »

kylell wrote: post #6

this is also an effect of US isolationism and America first rhetoric which also means abandoning other states, eg. Ukraine, when the US loses its influence/importance so does the dollar, meaning you can't print like crazy and export your inflation in the world.

It's only a shame that it has to be a country like China that rises up at US' expense, rather than say Switzerland, Germany, Sweden, etc. What happens to global human rights when it's China that has an oversized influence on world politics and when countries start easily accepting extraditions to China (say for criticizing the Chinese leader, which could be a crime there), and many other outcomes like that?

US' track record isn't stellar, especially over the past 2 decades, and in the past decade the US has also taken a backseat in terms of actually protecting humans rights, even during Obama's time, but at least if you discount US' human rights violations in the Middle East, the US has been rather neutral on human rights (read: not positive) elsewhere. China may actually turn things to a negative trend for human rights everywhere else.

The UK under David Cameron had already started to use China as a role model for domestic censorship and surveillance. If China's influence grows, I imagine many other countries will follow UK's lead.

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