China CBDC progress ‘on track’ with finale ‘not very far away’, says PBOC’s former governor

‘Ninety per cent of retail payments in China are already digitalised’ said Zhou Xiaochuan, former head of PBOC on the opening day of HKMA-BIS conference

Zhou said that after China establishes a CBDC, features like cross border payments as well as applications of tokenisation like smart contracts could be evolved

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(L to R) HKMA Chief Executive Eddie Yue and People’s Bank of China Former Governor Zhou Xiaochuan, at the HKMA-BIS High Level Conference dinner at JW Marriott in Admiralty, Hong Kong. Photo: Jonathan Wong

Published: 10:39pm, 27 Nov 2023Updated: 10:21am, 28 Nov 2023

Progress in central bank digital currencies (CBDC) in China is “already on track” and the “final stage is not very far away”, according to the former head of the People’s Bank of China (PBOC) who was speaking at a conference in Hong Kong on Monday.

“Ninety per cent of retail payments in China are already digitalised,” said Zhou Xiaochuan, who retired in 2018 after 16 years as the longest-serving governor of the PBOC. “There is only 10 per cent left to do.”

The Hong Kong Monetary Authority (HKMA) and Bank for International Settlements (BIS) kicked off their two-day conference on Monday, with a welcome dinner at the JW Marriott Hotel.

The “HKMA-BIS High-Level Conference”, which commemorates the 30th anniversary of the HKMA and the 25th anniversary of the BIS representative office for Asia-Pacific, hosted more than 20 incumbent central bank governors and deputy governors, as well as eight former governors.

People’s Bank of China Former Governor Zhou Xiaochuan, keynote speaker at the HKMA-BIS High Level Conference dinner at JW Marriott in Admiralty, Hong Kong. Photo: Jonathan Wong

Zhou delivered the keynote address and spoke on the topic of digital currencies. China first began promoting the CBDC in 2019. Uptake of China’s CBDC is on the rise, with transactions and total value far beyond 2022 levels.