By Mathew Carr

April 8, 2025

Bypassing the US-dominated infrastructure for global trade, the People’s Bank of China reportedly announced connecting 10 ASEAN and Middle Eastern nations, mitigating the need for the US-based SWIFT system for international trade in these regions, according to Gugarat Samachar.

(I could not find a press release here, so beware … might be fake news …though I heard it yesterday, as well as reading it here above, today)

“The Digital Yuan, called Digital RMB, connected 10 ASEAN (Association of Southeast Asian Nations) consisting of Brunei, Cambodia, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, Myanmar, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand, and Vietnam, and six Middle Eastern nations, including the UAE,” according to the report.

This undercuts SWIFT (Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunications), the US-based system for international trade transactions, it said.

As per reports, the blockchain-run transaction system of China warps international settlements down to seven seconds and takes 3-5 business days with SWIFT, it said.

Moreover, Digital RMB will cut down transaction fees for these channels by 98%, as per reports, it said.

This can shift the power for international trade from the US to China, as expanding networks with ASEAN and Middle Eastern nations will bypass 38% of existing SWIFT traffic, it said.

CarrZee: this would make sense as a retaliation against Trump tariffs on China.