The purpose of this study is to identify the motivations and intentions behind the rapid push for China's Central Bank Digital Currency (CBDC) policy as part of a response to the volatility that China's CBDC policy will bring. There are two key issues...
The purpose of this study is to identify the motivations and intentions behind the rapid push for China's Central Bank Digital Currency (CBDC) policy as part of a response to the volatility that China's CBDC policy will bring. There are two key issues in the study related to the motivation and intention of promoting CBDC policies. First, to what extent is the CBDC policy related to the internationalization of the yuan? Second, if CBDC is not directly related to the RMB internationalization policy, what are the policy motivations and intentions behind the promotion of CBDC policy?
In Chapter 1, the author reviewed previous studies to determine whether the main purpose of China's CBDC policy is to internationalize the yuan or if there are other more important intentions. Previous studies have generally summarized the intention of China's CBDC policy as being either state control or the internationalization of the yuan. Contrary to such previous studies, this study focused on the argument that China's financial conditions themselves are not in a position to pursue a reserve currency through the internationalization of the yuan. This argument was also supported by scholars’ studies studying international currencies. While the media and related academic circles continue to have doubts about China, this study examined various claims and hypotheses about the policy motives and intentions of China's CBDC policy using process tracing and discourse analysis as qualitative research methodologies to determine whether these doubts are justified.
In addition, Chapter 1 classifies and analyzes various claims and hypotheses raised in relation to the current intent and background of China's CBDC policy into three aspects: description, control, and geopolitics. In the process of analysis, we were able to present a new hypothesis that could overwhelm and summarize these various claims and hypotheses. The centralization ideology hypothesis was that the main intention of promoting CBDC policy was to protect the centralization ideology from the challenge of the decentralization philosophy of private money. The reason why the centralization ideology hypothesis is friendly and relevant to explaining China's CBDC policy lies in the systemic characteristics and historical traditions of China.
Chapter 2 explores the historical and institutional background of the centralization ideology hypothesis of Chinese thought and democratic centralization, and identifies how it is affecting the current CBDC pilot project in China. In particular, this chapter focuses on the process of change in CBDC policy through the regulation of centralization. The final focus of this analysis is to find the centralization will of the Chinese government in the process of promoting CBDC policy.
Through the analysis of previous studies in the chapter, the author was able to confirm the significant influence of centralization ideology on China's CBDC policy, and also see how it is being adjusted to fit the real-world conditions and circumstances. The centralization will be firmly established in China's CBDC policy by making proper use of the introduction of permissioned blockchain methods and the adoption of hybrid models.
In Chapter 3, the author examined how the situation and conditions in China, such as the centralization drive, correspond to the situation and conditions of global CBDCs and determine the direction of China's CBDC policy. The analysis of these previous studies showed that global CBDCs are competing and cooperating in a centralization/decentralization framework.
To analyze the global CBDC situation, the author divided the world into five countries with similar conditions and environments in terms of various monetary systems and financial service environments, and compared the CBDC policies of these countries, including their CBDC promotion status and centralization intentions, with each other to find the implications of China's CBDC policy through such comparisons. The focus of the comparison was to examine the motives and intentions of each country to promote CBDCs within the most core and comprehensive framework surrounding CBDCs, namely the hegemony and geopolitics vs. function and convenience framework and the two major frameworks of centralization and decentralization, and to examine the differences in China's CBDC policy within these two frameworks. He also examined the global international payment system, the trends in cryptocurrency for overseas remittances provided by private companies, and the geopolitical implications of private-led digital currency technology. In addition, he also examined the progress of the M-Bridge project and the Agora project, which are being promoted as international CBDC cooperation platforms, which will be important issues in the future regarding CBDC. He also checked the status of more than 13 other platform projects related to this. The main implication of this analysis of global platform projects was that their actions had the potential to determine the future direction of the international monetary order. In the context, he also explored the possibility of another direction in the international monetary restructuring through the analysis of trends in digital assets of fiat money to crypto (F2C), especially stablecoins and tokenized deposits, which are emerging as a powerful model of future money along with CBDC.
What was revealed through the observations and analysis in the chapter was that the debate and conflict surrounding CBDC were more intense in the domestic sphere than in the international sphere. The central composition of the competition was a competition between centralization and decentralization, and the arguments and conflicts between the US political circles and private company Facebook, which was revealed in the development of the Libra project, was a representative manifestation of this. And the trends of dollar-based stablecoins and bank tokens, which are being discussed as alternatives to CBDC, were also attracting attention as important elements to watch in relation to CBDC, in line with the F2C three-power composition. The analysis in Chapter 3 confirmed that the intentions of countries around the world to promote CBDCs are complex and multilayered. In particular, it was noteworthy that the goals pursued by the United States and China differed depending on whether the stage of CBDC was inside or outside the country.
The main research topic in Chapter 4 was to approach the actual motives and intentions of China's CBDC policy through the analytical framework of the new concepts of ‘disguised purpose-oriented policy’ and ‘implicit policy value.’ The need for such a conceptual analytical framework stems from the closed nature of China's policy ecosystem and the ambiguity of the policy intent of China's CBDC policy. From this perspective, the limited access to policy information, data, and policy officials has led to the use of this exploratory analytical framework to track the direction of the causal relationship between the two variables of China's CBDC centralization ideology and China's policy-specific implicit survival value and the intent to promote China's CBDC policy.
To this end, the author has newly classified the types of Chinese policies and policy values. In the case of policy types, policies were classified into five types according to hierarchy, and an attempt was made to find a suitable type among the classified policy types for disguised policies. In the case of policy value types, the study derived a new type of policy value, implicit survival value, by applying the criteria for type classification obtained through the historical trajectory of the Chinese Communist Party. The empirical basis for this attempt was found in the data containing China's national policies, the Seven Documents, and the actual policies of China derived from them.
In accordance with the analytical framework of disguised policies and implicit policy values, the main topics of Chapter 4 were organized as follows: First, the author used examples from the CBDC policy. The role and meaning of decentralization implied in the CBDC small-value transaction method were analyzed and captured from a new perspective, and the counterargument for the active adoption of the small-value transaction method was confirmed through a case comparison with India's CBDC. Second, the author sought to secure empirical evidence of the camouflaged policy purpose and implicit survival value by analyzing the Gongsu Restaurant and Public Restaurant System, a newly revived policy model from the Mao Zedong era that is not directly related to CBDC policy. In particular, the Gongsu Restaurant System is the most similar policy case to the CBDC policy in terms of the ambiguity of its motivation and intent, and is an important comparison and analysis target for the pursuit of implicit survival value. Third, the digital industry policy as a sector to which CBDC policies should belong, which seems to be related to CBDC policies but cannot be connected in reality, raising questions. This policy is particularly evident in the absence of any mention of CBDC policies in data such as China's Digital Industry Report or Digital Industry Evaluation Indicators. It was certainly surprising that the CBDC policy, which is not only the core infrastructure of the digital industry but also invests huge amounts of money on par with the Belt and Road Initiative, was excluded from the discussion on the digital industry.
Third, there is a digital industry policy that seems to be related to the CBDC policy but cannot be connected in reality, raising questions. This policy is the digital industry policy as a sector that should be included. This policy is particularly evident in the absence of any mention of the CBDC policy in materials such as China's digital industry report or digital industry evaluation indicators. These policy cases were used as empirical examples to confirm that China's CBDC policy is a disguised policy, and the motivation behind it is implicit survival value.
In addition, in Chapter 4, the interrelationship between the three policies, the Belt and Road Initiative, the Yuan International Settlement System (CIPS), and China's CBDC policy, was compared and analyzed. This is directly related to China's ‘Yuan Internationalization Policy,’ which is the subject of the study. If the intention of promoting China's CBDC is to internationalize the yuan, the CBDC has been shown to have a connection with CIPS in many ways. According to the results of the data analysis, as expected, the Belt and Road Initiative and the CIPS policy were closely linked with each other and played a pioneering role in the internationalization of the yuan. However, the CBDC policy, despite its future technological potential, appeared to be focusing on the domestic distribution and establishment of the digital yuan, which is applied to small-value transactions, rather than the internationalization of the yuan.
The analysis results from Chapters 2 to 4 show that China's CBDC is for domestic use, and the top priority of the CBDC policy as revealed through data analysis is to protect the centralized ideology and centralized political system. In the end, the final conclusion of the study is that China's CBDC policy is more of a system security policy to protect the centralized communist leadership system rather than a policy of ‘internationalization of the yuan,’ and the policy values that support it are likely to be survival values.