While Mark Zuckerberg was fighting with the United States Congress over Facebook’s Libra, China took another step forward in the global technology race. President Xi Jinping called on his country to “seize the opportunity” in order to become a leader in blockchain technology as it tries to do likewise with artificial intelligence.
This could be an opportunity for China, which has already become the world’s leading trading nation, to stand up to the first economic world power and flex its muscles. But how significant is this move, and what happens if China really wins the blockchain race? “For the Chinese, digitizing the renminbi is a way to get out from under the U.S.’s thumb,” said Eswar Prasad, an economics professor at Cornell University and former head of the IMF’s China Division. China’s goal isn’t necessarily to overthrow the dollar either. Prasad added, “but they want to give their allies an alternative to the dollar and create a system that couldn’t be disrupted by the U.S.”