ASEAN is quite a delicate geopolitical entity: gracious, polite and consensual but at the same time, always privileging its “centrality”. The collective 11 Southeast Asians (East Timor is the new member) are very serious global players – with a GDP of $3.8 trillion, and constantly rising.....
Yet a lot of players trying to escape the threats and tariff tantrum tsunamis will start to pay serious attention. Digital yuan settlements take a matter of only 7 to 8 seconds. Moreover, they allow for transaction tracking and automated enforcement of anti-money laundering laws. Compare it to archaic SWIFT – where delays of up to 5 days are practically the norm.
Last year, the volume of yuan settlements across six ASEAN nations, including Malaysia, Singapore and Thailand, reached 5.8 trillion yuan – 120% more than in 2021.
The digital yuan was key in New Silk Roads/Belt and Road Inititave (BRI) projects across ASEAN such as the China-Laos high-speed railway and the Jakarta-Bandung high-speed railway – combined with the Beidou navigation system and quantum communication technologies. That’s the Chinese Digital Silk Road in effect – with the digital yuan arguably working as the top strategic BRI tool.
So, in a nutshell, China is already creating a loop of yuan payments across Southeast Asia; and at the same time is officially rewiring its massive financial system to trade globally bypassing the US dollar. No wonder the Empire of Chaos has gone berserk.
