China’s war chest: how Beijing is using its currency to insulate against future sanctions

For more than a decade, Beijing has been trying to reduce its reliance on the dollar, motivated by risks emerging from the US economy – such as the financial crash of 2008 – and the desire to boost its own sphere of influence. But in the last year, a drive to insulate China’s economy from dollar-based sanctions has emerged as possibly the most important incentive for decoupling from the dollar,