Ep. 78: China’s Digital Currency Electronic Payment (DCEP) dreams

TechBuzz China by Pandaily

Episode 78 of Tech Buzz China features our co-host Rui Ma in conversation with Yán Xiāo 肖妍 on the timely topic of China’s proposed national digital currency. Yan is a San Francisco–based project lead at the World Economic Forum with substantial experience in fintech, having worked as senior legal counsel at Ant Group. She is also a lawyer by training and holds both American and Chinese legal licenses. Her current work focuses on digital payments and cross-border payments. Yan’s opinions on this episode are her own thoughts, and do not reflect those of the Forum in any way. Rui was an early observer of the cryptocurrency space, and has witnessed the rise of bitcoin and other technologies unfold concurrently in the U.S. and China. Listen to their conversation to find out: What does Yan think about the prospects for China’s proposed digital currency, which is typically called digital yuan or digital RMB? How are these prospects affected by the existing payments and digital landscape in China? What are the key features of digital RMB? What technologies form its backbone? What are other countries doing, and what is the global landscape for this type of national initiative? Yup, Rui is still researching and writing on ByteDance for her ebook. You’ll want to get front-row updates on it and to her other work by subscribing to our newsletter, at techbuzzchina.com. You’ll also want to check out the Tech Buzz China YouTube channel, and can view all of our past transcripts on our website, as well as at pandaily.com and supchina.com. If you enjoy our work, please do let us know by leaving us an iTunes review (drop us a note saying you did, and we’ll send you an Extra Buzz newsletter subscription), and by tweeting at us at @techbuzzchina. We also read your emails, at [e-mail] and [e-mail]. Thank you to our producers, Caiwei Chen and Kaiser Kuo, as well as to Jason MacRonald at SupChina.