Wang Yongli, former deputy governor of the Bank of China: We should pay more attention to the development of stablecoins

Source: Beijing Business Daily

From May 17th to 18th, the 2025 Tsinghua PBC Global Financial Forum was held in Shenzhen. At the sub-forum with the theme of "2025 China Economic Outlook", Wang Yongli, former Deputy Governor of Bank of China and Co-Chairman of Digital China Information Services Group Co., Ltd., said that in the face of the increasingly complex international situation, China needs to do its own thing well and accelerate the development of domestic and international dual circulation. Among them, speeding up RMB cross-border payment and clearing is an important infrastructure and an important driving force.

At present, China has made many achievements in the development of RMB cross-border payment and clearing, including promoting the development of interbank payment and clearing, establishing China's own UnionPay organization, establishing and developing the RMB Cross-border Payment System (CIPS), and increasing cooperation with Swift.

At the same time, a new business format has also emerged in the field of cross-border payment and clearing, that is, the development of crypto assets has given rise to the development of fiat stablecoins. Today's fiat currency payment and clearing system cannot meet the needs of global 24-hour online transactions, and if it cannot be exchanged with fiat currencies, it will be difficult to realize the value of crypto assets, and its development will be severely restricted. Therefore, in Wang Yongli's view, if crypto assets are legalized, they need to be supported by the payment and settlement of currencies.

Wang Yongli said that in the United States, stablecoins pegged to the equivalent value of fiat currencies have been born between fiat currencies and crypto assets, the most typical ones are USDT and USDC. At present, stablecoins are mainly based on the US dollar, and what kind of impact it will bring is worthy of great attention from other countries. In particular, stablecoins need to use new technologies to promote the operational efficiency of the currency, reduce costs, and strictly control risks.

After the emergence of stablecoins, it can be seen that not only the rapid development of crypto assets such as traditional Bitcoin, but also the emergence of new areas of digital asset securitization such as NFT and RWA. Therefore, when promoting cross-border payment and settlement, currency cannot only stay in the traditional service methods and fields, but also needs to use new technologies, and even learn from some models and technologies of stablecoins to transform the operation of currency.

Wang Yongli suggested that the mainland should pay more attention to the development of stablecoins from the industry and academic fields, and promote the further development of the digital yuan. "If a stablecoin is pegged to a fiat currency equivalent, theoretically, a stablecoin is a token pegged to a currency, and if the token can do this, why can't our fiat currency?"

Wang Yongli also reminded that there are various US dollar stablecoins, but too many US dollar stablecoins are not necessarily a good thing. There is a need to establish a more unified operational mechanism.

When further talking about the development of financial technology, Wang Yongli pointed out that at present, China has been at the forefront of the world in the fields of mobile payment and digital currency, but duplicate construction, data islands and security risks are becoming "reefs" restricting high-quality development. Specifically, the self-built payment and data systems of various institutions have led to confusion in interfaces, higher and higher interconnection costs, and small and medium-sized institutions have gradually fallen behind; All data assets are actually controlled by business operators (such as platform companies), rather than real business initiators (users or enterprises), burying hidden dangers of privacy leakage and abuse; The ownership of data assets is unclear and the circulation rules are unclear, which restricts the release of the value of digital assets.

In this regard, Wang Yongli proposed to use the digital yuan as a model to build an intensive digital infrastructure. The e-CNY adopts the unified app architecture of the central bank, which can theoretically collect all transaction data and achieve accurate traceability of natural person/legal person. If this model is extended to identity management, users may be able to replace physical documents with digital IDs, and set their own information usage scenarios and timeliness.

"If there are practical breakthroughs in these aspects, the so-called digital currency, digital assets, digital finance, and digital society will have deep-rooted changes." Wang Yongli said.