The former leader of China’s digital currency research through to 2018, Yao Qian, commented that the purpose of a CBDC is not to monitor payments because it can already do that. He also observed that a central bank digital currency (CBDC) such as a digital yuan could additionally operate on blockchains such as Ethereum and Diem. And he reaffirmed that the eCNY is a synthetic CBDC. As he’s no longer working at the central bank, the executive highlighted that his views were personal ones.
Part of Qian’s speech was a rebuttal of comments made by Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell at the end of April. Powell said that the Chinese government would use the digital yuan to watch all payments in real-time.
Helping the government to monitor real-time transactions was not the motivation behind the digital yuan, observed Qian. “In fact, third-party payment technology can already enable the transparency of all real-time transactions,” said Qian, who is currently a Director at the China Securities Regulatory Commission (CSRC) as reported in Sina.
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