Huang Qifan- the people's Bank of China may be the world's first central bank to launch a digital currency

"The people's Bank of China has been studying DCEP for five or six years, and I think it has become mature. The people's Bank of China is likely to be the world's first central bank to launch a digital currency. "

On October 28, Huang Qifan, vice president of China International Economic Exchange Center, said at the first Bund financial summit that the digital currency launched by the people's Bank of China is a new encrypted electronic currency system based on blockchain technology, which will adopt a two-tier operation system, that is, the people's Bank of China will first exchange DCEP to banks or other financial institutions, and then these institutions will exchange it to the public. The significance of DCEP is that it is not the digitization of the existing currency, but the replacement of M0. It greatly reduces the dependence of the transaction link on the account, which is conducive to the circulation and internationalization of RMB. At the same time, DCEP can realize the real-time collection of data such as currency creation, bookkeeping and flow, which can provide useful reference for the release of currency and the formulation and implementation of monetary policy.

Previously, in August, Mu Changchun, deputy director of the payment Department of the central bank, elaborated on the technical roadmap of the central bank's digital currency. He explained that the reason why the central bank's digital currency adopts a two-tier operation system is that "this delivery system is suitable for China's national conditions, which can not only use existing resources to mobilize the enthusiasm of commercial banks, but also smoothly improve the acceptance of digital currency."

For monetary policy, Mu Changchun said that the two-tier operation system would not change the relationship between monetary creditor's rights and debts in circulation. In order to ensure that the central bank's digital currency does not exceed the issuance, commercial institutions pay the reserve to the central bank in full amount and 100%. The central bank's digital currency is still the central bank's liability, guaranteed by the central bank's credit, and has unlimited legal solvency. In addition, the double-layer operation system will not change the existing currency delivery system and dual account structure, and will not compete with the deposit currency of commercial banks. As it does not affect the existing transmission mechanism of monetary policy, nor strengthen the pro cyclical effect under the pressure environment, it will not have a negative impact on the real economy. In addition, adopting a two-tier system to issue and exchange the legal digital currency of the central bank is also conducive to curbing the public demand for encrypted assets and consolidating China's monetary sovereignty.

"It needs to be emphasized that under the arrangement of two-tier operation system, the centralized management mode should still be adhered to." Mu Changchun said that the natural attribute of encrypted assets is decentralization, but the central bank's digital currency must adhere to the centralized management mode, because, first, the central bank's digital currency is still the central bank's debt to the public, and this relationship between debt and debt has not changed with the change of monetary form. Therefore, it is still necessary to ensure the central position of the central bank in the process of delivery. Second, in order to ensure and strengthen the macro Prudential and monetary control functions of the central bank, we need to continue to adhere to the centralized management mode. Third, the second level designates the operation organization to exchange currency, which should be managed in a centralized way to avoid over issuance of currency by the designated operation organization. Finally, since the dual account system has not been changed in the whole exchange process, the original transmission mode of monetary policy should be maintained, which also needs to maintain the central management position of the central bank.

In addition, at this stage, the central bank's digital currency design focuses on the substitution of M0 rather than M1 and M2. "The existing M0 (banknotes and coins) are easy to be forged anonymously, which may be used for money laundering, terrorist financing and other risks. In addition, electronic payment tools, such as bankcards and Internet payment, based on the existing tight coupling mode of bank accounts, the public's demand for anonymous payment cannot be fully met, and so electronic payment tools cannot completely replace M0. The design of the central bank's digital currency keeps the properties and main features of cash, and meets the needs of portability and anonymity. It is a better tool to replace cash. "

Content of Speech

Digitalization reshapes global financial ecology
——Speech at the 2019 Bund financial summit
(Huang Qifan, October 28, 2019)
Dear guests and friends,
I'm very glad to be invited to the 2019 Bund financial summit. Today, let's talk about my understanding of digitalization and how digitalization can subvert the global financial ecosystem.

I. Composition and subversive role of Digitalization
Digitalization mainly includes Big Data, cloud computing, artificial intelligence and blockchain technology. And the relationship between them, if we use the digital platform to compare with people: the Internet, mobile Internet and Internet of things are just like the human nervous system, big data is like the viscera, skin and organs in the human body, and cloud computing is equivalent to the backbone of the human body. Without the network, the five viscera and the backbone can't cooperate with each other; without cloud computing, the five viscera can't hang up; without big data, cloud computing is a walking corpse and a hollow skeleton. With the nervous system, spine, viscera, skin and organs, plus the artificial intelligence equivalent to soul - human brain and nerve endings system, the basic digital platform has been formed. The blockchain technology, like the more advanced "gene transformation technology", greatly improves the brain response speed, bone strength and limb control flexibility from the basic level. With the help of blockchain technology, the basic functions and applications of digital platform will be subversive transformed, which will give a stronger impetus to the economic society.
The reason why digitalization can subvert the tradition is that it has five genes: the whole airspace, the whole process, the whole scene, the whole analysis and the whole value. The so-called "whole airspace" refers to: breaking the regional and spatial barriers, from the sky to the ground, from the ground to the underwater, from the domestic to the international, which can be generalized into a whole; the so-called "whole process" refers to: it is related to every point in all human production and life processes, 24 hours a day, and constantly accumulating information; the so-called "whole scene" refers to: crossing industry sectors, putting all human life, All the behavior scenes in the work are connected; the so-called "full analysis" refers to: through the collection, analysis and judgment of artificial intelligence (AI), all the behavior information of human beings is predicted to produce new cognition, new behavior and new value which are different from the traditional one; and the so-called "full value" refers to: breaking the closure of a single value system, penetrating all the value systems, and integrating and creating before An unprecedented and huge value chain.
The combination of the five genes of digitalization and any traditional industrial chain will form a new way of economic organization, which will have a subversive impact on traditional industries. When it is combined with industrial manufacturing, it forms industrial manufacturing 4.0; when it is combined with logistics industry, it forms intelligent logistics system; when it is combined with urban management, it forms intelligent city; when it is combined with finance, it forms financial technology or technology finance. In the process of combining with finance, digital has massive information, computing power and consensus mechanism, which can greatly improve the efficiency and security of financial services, reduce the operating cost, bad debt rate and risk of financial institutions.
II. Changes brought about by the combination of digitalization and Finance
After the five genes of digitalization collide with finance, it reshapes the global financial ecology. Mainly reflected in the following four aspects.
(I) Subverting the global personal payment method
Before the advent of digital wave, personal payment in China is mainly completed by paper money, savings card and credit card. In 2002, China established UnionPay Company on the basis of merging the national bank card information exchange center and 18 city (region) bankcard network service sub centers. After the establishment of UnionPay, it has independently built a bank card cross bank transaction clearing system, promoted the unified RMB bank card standard, developed rapidly in the traditional payment field, and promoted the continuous progress of economic society. However, in the field of innovative payment, such as Internet payment, mobile payment, QR code payment, etc., progress is slow.
With the technology progress and application popularization of mobile Internet in China, mobile payment has entered every corner of life, and the new payment has occupied the mainstream position. The mobile payment represented by Alipay and WeChat has covered 1 billion 400 million people. From online to offline, from the payment of daily water and electricity charges to transportation, tourism, hotel, catering, mobile payment breaks the limitations of traditional payment methods in space and time by virtue of its efficient and convenient payment experience. In 2018, China Mobile paid about US $39 trillion, compared with $180 billion in the US, and the gap was hundreds of times. China's e-payment system has become a global leader. Nowadays, where there are Chinese, there is mobile payment. In the United States, Japan and South Korea, Southeast Asia and other dozens of countries and regions of the world's offline merchant shop, Alipay and WeChat can cover almost all kinds
Mobile payment makes personal capital flow information precipitate into credit data, which makes enterprises have a great innovation at the level of business form - separation of ownership and use right. This is the basis for the emergence and vigorous development of bike sharing, office sharing and other sharing formats. When an enterprise sells goods or services, it no longer needs to sell the ownership, but only needs to sell the right to use for a certain period of time. In the future, with the promotion of mobile payment, sharing furniture, tools, intelligence and other sharing formats will usher in greater development opportunities.
With the gradual penetration of blockchain technology in the financial field, the underlying technology implementation mode of personal cross-border transfer has begun to be rewritten. In the past, personal cross-border transfers needed to cross Payment institutions, banks and international settlement networks, and the whole process was inefficient due to serial processing. Now, blockchain technology can be used as an interface technology between Payment institutions and commercial banks. Multi parties in cross-border remittance transfer remittance message to all participants through blockchain technology, so as to realize multi-party collaborative information processing, parallelize the serial processing between original institutions, and improve the efficiency of information transmission and processing.
However, with the rapid development of new payment methods, we should also respect people's choice of payment methods. With the popularity of mobile payment, some businesses began to be keen on "no cash", and the phenomenon of rejecting cash also increased. According to the regulations of China on the administration of RMB, no unit or individual may reject RMB in the form of terms, notices, statements, notices, etc. Rejection of cash not only damages the legitimate rights and interests of consumers, but also endangers financial security in the long run. At the same time, because the foundation of mobile payment is power facilities, data center and network system, once there is an accident such as earthquake, power failure and man-made disaster, mobile payment cannot be used, which will bring serious consequences to the society.
(II) Rebuild the trade settlement system
In the digital era, it is not only necessary to change the personal payment method, but also the payment and settlement method between enterprises and countries. When enterprises carry out foreign exchange settlement in international trade, they will face the problem of whether the two countries' currencies are paid directly or the US dollar is the middle price. Before the launch of CIPS, the cross-border settlement of RMB was highly dependent on the U.S. SWIFT (Global Interbank Financial Telecommunication Association) system and CHIPS (New York Clearing House interbank payment system). Established in 1973, SWIFT provides security message exchange services and interface software for financial institutions, covering more than 200 countries, with nearly 10000 direct and indirect members. At present, the daily settlement of SWIFT system reaches 5 trillion to 6 trillion US dollars, and the annual settlement is about 2000 trillion US dollars. The CHIPS is one of the largest private payment and clearing systems in the world. It was established in 1970 and operated by the New York Clearing House Association. It mainly carries out the clearing of transnational US dollar transactions and handles more than 90% of the global international US dollar transactions. SWIFT and CHIPS gather most of the world's banks. With their efficient, reliable, cheap and perfect services, they play an active role in promoting the development of world trade, accelerating the global currency circulation and international financial settlement, and promoting the modernization and standardization of international financial business.
However, there are some risks in highly relying on SWIFT and CHIPS. First of all, SWIFT and CHIPS are gradually becoming the financial instruments under the long arm jurisdiction of the United States to exercise global hegemony. Historically, the United States launched several financial wars with the help of SWIFT and CHIPS. In 2006, the U.S. Treasury Department analyzed the database of SWIFT and CHIPS, and found that European commercial banks had capital exchanges with Iran. Then, under the pretext of financing terrorism, the U.S. asked more than 100 European banks to freeze the funds of Iranian customers, and threatened to blacklist the banks providing financial services for Iran. Then most of the world's banks cut off all business with Iranian financial institutions, and Iran's foreign financial channels were almost completely cut off. In the 2014 Ukraine crisis, the United States threatened to exclude Russia from the SWIFT system, in addition to cutting the oil price by the United Kingdom and Saudi Arabia. Subsequently, the Russian Ruble depreciated significantly and the economy suffered serious negative impact. Second, SWIFT is an outdated, inefficient and expensive payment system. Since the establishment of SWIFT 46 years ago, the technology has been updated slowly and the efficiency has been relatively low. International telegraphic transfer usually takes 3-5 working days to arrive at the account, and large-scale remittance usually requires paper documents, which is difficult to deal with large-scale transactions effectively. Meanwhile SWIFT usually charges 1/10000 of the settlement volume, and gains huge profits with the monopoly platform.
Therefore, in the current trend of digital wave, the SWIFT and CHIPS system, which relies on slow technology update and hard to ensure security, has no future. Driven by big data platform and blockchain technology, building a new clearing and settlement network has become the consensus of many countries. Blockchain technology has five characteristics: decentralization, information cannot be tampered with, collective maintenance, reliable database, openness and transparency. It has a natural advantage of transparency, security and credibility in the settlement of the Qing Dynasty. At present, 24 governments in the world have invested in and built distributed accounting systems, and more than 90 multinational enterprises have joined in different blockchain alliances. EU, Japan, Russia and other countries are studying to build an international crypto-currency payment network similar to SWIFT to replace SWIFT. More and more financial institutions and blockchain platforms are making cross-border payments through blockchain water testing, bypassing SWIFT and CHIPS global payment systems with practical actions.
(III) Reform the global currency issuance mechanism
Money is an indispensable medium for social relations and exchange between countries, regions and people. There was no money in the primitive society, and the scarce materials such as fur and shells were used for exchange. However, the media of exchange could not be unified all the time, which restricted the development of productivity. The agricultural society began to use precious metals such as gold, silver or copper coins as monetary intermediaries. After the industrial society, the value of commodities is more and more large. It is difficult to carry a huge trading scale with precious metals such as gold as currency, so paper money appears. In the 1980s, the electronic currency became more and more developed, and electronic wallet, credit card, memory card and mobile payment developed rapidly. Today, the digital currency represented by bitcoin, Libra and central bank digital currency begins to appear, and the currency ushers in the digital era.
So what is the basis of currency issuance? Before money relied on precious metals such as gold and silver as anchors. After the collapse of the Bretton Woods system in the 1970s, the basis of currency issuance has become a national credit linked to national sovereignty, GDP and fiscal revenue. With its powerful military and economy, the United States monopolized the global oil dollar settlement and most of the international trade settlement through the U.S. dollar, which became the "global currency" in fact.
However, currencies that rely on sovereign credit also face problems such as currency over issuance. Before the collapse of the Bretton Woods system in 1970, the total amount of global basic currency (total assets of the central bank) was less than $100 billion; in 1980, it was about $350 billion; in 1990, it was about $700 billion; in 2000, it was about $1.5 trillion; in 2008, it was $4 trillion; by the end of 2017, it was $21 trillion. Especially in the past 10 years, in order to get rid of the financial crisis, the United States has used treasury bonds to stimulate economic development, resulting in the total amount of government debt rising from $9 trillion in 2007 to $22 trillion in 2019, which has exceeded the GDP of the United States. If the U.S. debt continues to climb, the maturity debt and interest consume all the fiscal revenue, the U.S. has no credit to issue treasury bonds again, the financing ability will be weakened, and a new global financial crisis will be inevitable.
How to change the situation of over issuance of money? After the collapse of the gold standard, the world has not solved this problem well. Although some scholars call for a return to the gold standard, but limited by gold reserves, it is obviously not realistic to return to the gold standard. In the digital era, some enterprises try to challenge the sovereign currency by issuing bitcoin and Libra. This decentralized currency based on the block chain is separated from the sovereign credit, the issuance basis cannot be guaranteed, the currency value cannot be stable, and it is difficult to truly form social wealth. I don't believe that Libra will succeed. For sovereign countries, the best way to exercise the issuing power of currency countries is to issue sovereign digital currency by the government and the central bank. In the process of issuing sovereign digital currency, the global central bank should not only improve the convenience and security, but also make a new rule, so that the digital currency can be linked with the sovereign credit, establish an appropriate proportion relationship with the national GDP, fiscal revenue and gold reserve, and curb the situation of currency abuse through some mechanism.
At present, the digital currency (DCEP) launched by the Central Bank of China is a new crypto electronic currency system based on blockchain technology. DCEP will adopt a two-tier operation system, that is, the people's Bank of China will first exchange DCEP to banks or other financial institutions, and then these institutions will exchange DCEP to the public. The significance of DCEP is that it is not the digitization of the existing currency, but the replacement of M0. It greatly reduces the dependence of the transaction link on the account, which is conducive to the circulation and internationalization of RMB. At the same time, DCEP can realize the real-time collection of data such as currency creation, bookkeeping and flow, which can provide useful reference for the release of currency and the formulation and implementation of monetary policy. The people's Bank of China has been studying DCEP for five or six years, and I think it has become mature. The people's Bank of China is likely to be the world's first central bank to launch a digital currency.
(IV) Improve the efficiency of industrial chain operation
In 5g Era, in addition to consumer electronic products such as mobile phones, tablets and laptops, smart home, automobile and even industrial manufacturing equipment and other terminals can be intellectualized and connected to the Internet. The digital platform will further evolve into the Internet platform of everything, driving the development of human Internet industry from to C-type consumer Internet to B-type industrial Internet. Among them, science and technology finance can connect the data platform, financial enterprises, upstream and downstream of the industrial chain to help all parties optimize the allocation of resources, improve operating efficiency and reduce operating costs.
There are two forms of development of science and technology finance. One is "Internet + finance", and the conditional digital platform company builds up non banking financial institutions around its own industrial chain and develops financial business independently. The other is "Finance+Internet". Financial enterprises build digital platforms according to the needs of industrial chain development. In the past few years, the economy has been a bit out of shape. Many industrial and commercial enterprises and non-financial enterprises are keen on cross-border operation and apply for various financial licenses. Various financial institutions are keen on collectivization and full licenses, so that the financial industry has overlapping leverage, accumulated risks and a lot of chaos. At present, the financial industry is in the process of deleveraging, risk prevention, strengthening the reorganization of asset management business and cross-border business under the new situation as planned by the central government.
In the future, where is the way out for non-bank financial institutions under the digital platform? I think the most reasonable and promising model is the organic combination of digital platform and various financial institutions to form a digital financial system. All kinds of institutions do their best and show their strengths. The digital platform connects the upstream and downstream enterprises of the industrial chain, grasps the real transaction information, and can cooperate with various financial institutions to provide financing, trade, asset transaction and other financial services for thousands of raw materials, processing and distribution enterprises in the supply chain. In this process, as long as the digital platform controls the capital source and leverage ratio, it can greatly reduce the risk, obtain reasonable profits, and effectively play the inclusive financial function.
Finally, I'd like to briefly summarize what I'd like to share with you today: today's era is a digital era. Technological innovation and the overall rise of digital economy have transformed science and technology from the original role of a tool into a backbone driving financial change. The continuous collision and integration of digital five genes and financial industry has not only changed the settlement mode and sovereign currency issuing mechanism among individuals, enterprises and countries, but also greatly improved the efficiency of industrial chain operation, bringing the development of the whole economy and society and human progress. Looking forward to the future, new financial formats such as quantitative investment and intelligent investment consulting, artificial intelligence pricing and claims accounting, financial cloud services, blockchain certificates are evolving, which will lead the financial industry into a new era.