China launches testing of national cryptocurrency for 500 million citizens

Deputy Governor of the National Bank of China Fan Yifei announced the country’s plans to expand pilot tests of the national digital currency (CBDC) e-CNY in four provinces: Guangdong, Jiangsu, Hebei, and Sichuan. According to him, the CBRC is going to continue research in this area and the organization is now satisfied with the results of the work done. The e-CNY cryptocurrency will become available to more than 360 million Chinese citizens.

The cryptocurrency experiment has become the largest of all the actions that the Chinese authorities have ever taken in relation to the digital asset market. Nevertheless, there are still 13 provinces and regions in the country that have not started testing the digital yuan, including Xinjiang, Tibet, and Inner Mongolia. Most of these provinces have less developed economies and infrastructure than the metropolitan areas.

Analyzing the first CBDC test, which took place back in April 2020, the Central Bank of China expressed its desire to completely replace cash with the digital yuan in the near future. As of January 2022, 261 million Chinese citizens have created digital wallets for e-CNY and have made transactions worth more than $ 13 billion — data collected since the launch of the pilot program.

It is worth noting that China allowed foreign athletes to use CBDC during the 2022 Winter Olympics held in Beijing. In addition, in August, citizens were able to pay with e-CNY on some public transportation routes. We would like to add that the Chinese government has not yet openly stated that CBDC will become available to all residents of the country.