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On the 14th, the official website of the Ministry of Commerce released the "Notice on Issuing the Overall Plan for Comprehensively Deepening the Pilot Program for Innovation and Development of Service Trade", which announced the digital RMB pilot areas.
The reporter noticed that Article 93, "Comprehensively deepening the pilot tasks, specific measures and division of responsibilities for innovative development of service trade," proposed: Carry out a digital RMB pilot in the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei region, the Yangtze River Delta, the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area and other qualified pilot areas in the central and western regions.
Mu Changchun's pilot areas include Beijing, Tianjin and Hebei
The "Notice" stated that the People's Bank of China will formulate policy guarantee measures; it will first be promoted with the assistance of Shenzhen, Chengdu, Suzhou, Xiongan New Area and other places and relevant departments of the future Winter Olympics scenes, and will be expanded to other regions as appropriate.
What is digital currency? Simply put, the central bank's digital currency is a digital alternative to paper money. It has an English name: DC/EP (Digital Currency Electronic Payment), which means digital currency and electronic payment tool.
"The functions and attributes of digital currency are exactly the same as paper currency, except that it is in digital form," said Mu Changchun, director of the Digital Currency Research Institute of the central bank. In other words, if we regard the digital currency issued by the central bank as digitalized RMB cash, it is easy to understand the concept of digital currency.
Digital currency is the best tool to replace cash
How will digital currency affect our lives? What is the difference between it and paper money and mobile payments, and how will they coexist?
Fan Yifei, deputy governor of the People's Bank of China, said that the central bank's digital currency focuses on replacing M0 (that is, banknotes and coins), while maintaining the attributes and main characteristics of cash, meeting the needs of portability and anonymity, and will be the best tool to replace cash.
Mu Changchun once described such a usage scenario: As long as you and I have DC/EP digital wallets on our phones, we don’t even need the Internet. As long as the phones have power, we can transfer the digital currency in one person’s digital wallet to another by touching the two phones together. Digital currency does not need to be bound to any bank account when paying, unlike WeChat and Alipay, which require bank card binding.
Why does my country want to promote digital currency? According to Yi Gang, the governor of the People's Bank of China, the digital economy is an increasingly important driving force for global economic growth. The research and development and application of legal digital currency will help to efficiently meet the public's demand for legal currency under the conditions of the digital economy, improve the convenience, security and anti-counterfeiting level of retail payments, and promote the accelerated development of my country's digital economy.
The central bank started research on legal digital currency early. In 2014, the central bank set up a special team to conduct special research on the digital currency issuance framework, key technologies, issuance and circulation environment, and related international experience. At the end of 2017, with approval, the central bank organized some strong commercial banks and relevant institutions to jointly carry out the research and development of the digital RMB system (DC/EP). DC/EP has basically completed the top-level design, standard setting, function development, joint debugging and testing, etc. under the premise of adhering to two-tier operation, cash (M0) substitution, and controllable anonymity.
There is no timetable for the official launch yet
The reporter sorted out public reports and found that my country's digital currency research and development process is accelerating this year.
In January this year, the central bank’s official microblog stated that in 2019, the central bank basically completed the top-level design, standard setting, function development, joint debugging and testing of legal digital currency. The 2020 National Currency, Gold and Silver and Security Protection Video and Telephone Conference held on April 3 proposed that the development of legal digital currency should be unswervingly promoted. At the first quarter financial statistics release conference on April 10, Zhou Xuedong, director of the General Office of the central bank, said that digital currency will be promoted in an orderly manner according to the plan, and the digital economy may become a new highlight of economic development, and the requirements for the development of digital currency will become higher and higher.
In April, news such as "the central bank's digital currency is being tested internally at the Agricultural Bank of China" and "the central bank's digital currency's first application scenario will be implemented in Xiangcheng District, Suzhou" continued to ferment, and a photo of the internal testing of an Agricultural Bank of China account was circulated on the Internet.
The Digital Currency Research Institute of the Central Bank responded that the DC/EP information circulated online is the test content in the process of technology development, and does not mean that the digital RMB has been officially launched. The current closed testing of the digital RMB will not affect the commercial operation of listed institutions, nor will it have an impact on the RMB issuance and circulation system, financial markets and social economy outside the testing environment.
On August 3, the central bank held a video conference on work in the second half of 2020. The meeting mentioned that the closed pilot of legal digital currency has been successfully launched, and the research and development of legal digital currency will be actively and steadily promoted in the second half of the year.
Yi Gang recently publicly disclosed the latest progress of digital currency again. He said that at present, the research and development of digital RMB follows the principles of stability, security, controllability, innovation and practicality, and first conducts internal closed pilot tests in Shenzhen, Suzhou, Xiong'an, Chengdu and the future Winter Olympics scenes to test theoretical reliability, system stability, functional availability, process convenience, scenario applicability and risk controllability.
"But the current pilot test is just routine work in the research and development process, and does not mean that the digital RMB will be officially launched. There is no timetable for when it will be officially launched," Yi Gang said.
Source: Beijing Daily Client |
