Every yuan’s a winner: Xi Jinping’s UK visit boosts London’s role in offshore yuan market, leverages expertise for internationalisation

President Xi Jinping’s state visit to Britain is already showing signs of boosting financial cooperation between the two countries.

London hopes the visit can help it gain competitiveness over rivals such as Singapore and Luxemburg by boosting its role in the offshore yuan market, while China hopes to use Britain’s financial expertise to push for the currency’s internationalisation.

Four things you need to know about ‘China’s World Bank’

In fact, many commentators say the AIIB is less about anything wrong with the ADB or the World Bank and more about China’s efforts to increase its voice in global development and financial governance, and even to reshape the financial world order itself.

With Tuesday marking the deadline for nations wishing to join as “founding members” of the new multinational lender, here are the four things you need know about the AIIB…

China looks to add yuan to IMF currency basket

China is in talks with the International Monetary Fund to include the yuan in the institution’s basket of reserve currencies, according to a central bank official.

“We are evaluating this and are actively in talks with the fund,” People’s Bank of China Deputy Governor Yi Gang said at a press conference in Beijing Thursday. “We hope it can fully consider the progress of yuan internationalization, allowing the yuan to be part of the SDR basket in the foreseeable future.”