Digital RMB vs. Dollar Hegemony? Friendly Foes in China-US Currency Competition

Abstract Digital transformations are impacting inter-state currency politics in strategically important ways. This article contributes to growing debates over the nature of US-China competition as the Chinese RMB rapidly digitizes in ways said to challenge the hegemony of a slower digitizing greenback. We categorize existing views of currency competition in the digital age into two categories: ‘conventional transformation’ and ‘transformative continuity’. Both these presently dominant perspectives, we argue, are overly techno-deterministic and stand in contrast to a third perspective we propose called ‘probabilistic flux’. Emphasizing the unanticipated and error-prone nature of technological change through Social Construction of Technology theory and informed by the IPE of monetary relations, we provide a more nuanced assessment of digital RMB’s challenges to dollar dominance stressing the functions, benefits and powers of international currency hegemony. Our conclusions are three-fold. First, wider digital currency alternatives to both the dollar and RMB have enriched the international currency functions of the former over the latter. Second, this broader array of digital currency alternatives combines with Chinese RMB digitization to gradually erode the functional base and benefits of dollar dominance position, as well as diminish the US’s international monetary power in both Asia and beyond. Third, what we see as largely friendly digital currency competition focused on domestic imperatives currently remains unpredictable. These findings pose present possibilities for greater international cooperation but equally for less friendly competition and flux particularly as US dollar digitization also unfolds in ways that are difficult to anticipate.