Recently, I observed a quite interesting phenomenon. An oil tanker was stopped at the narrowest part of the Strait of Hormuz, using a toll booth model—one dollar per barrel, a fully loaded VLCC costs two million dollars. But that’s not the main point. The key is that they accept USDT, Bitcoin, and Renminbi, but explicitly do not want dollars.

There is a deeper issue behind this event, which more and more people are discussing lately: the world’s largest trading nation issues a currency that is the hardest to buy.

That Greek shipowner encountered this. He paid the toll with USDT, the transfer was on-chain and arrived in ten minutes, a very familiar operation. But then his partner asked, “Would you like to try settling in Renminbi?” He stared at the screen and thought for a long time. His company is registered in Athens, with no Renminbi account, and he doesn’t even know which Greek bank can open one. He posed a simple yet complex question: How do you get Renminbi?

This question is much harder than it looks on the surface. Last year, China’s trade surplus reached $1.19 trillion, earning more than one trillion dollars annually from the global price difference of goods. But only 3% of global cross-border payments are in Renminbi. China makes a lot of money but can’t spend it. Among the top ten economies, only Brazil and Russia have a trade surplus with China; the other eight all run deficits— the U.S. has a $280 billion annual deficit, Japan, Germany, India, the UK, France, Italy, and Canada are all net buyers. Renminbi flows out of your hands, not into them.

Want to buy in the financial markets? The world’s largest offshore Renminbi pool is in Hong Kong, accounting for about 80% of offshore Renminbi payments. But the pool is shockingly shallow—total Renminbi deposits in the offshore market are about 1.6 trillion yuan, while China’s annual trade surplus in Renminbi exceeds 8 trillion. The entire pool isn’t even enough to cover the surplus, and it’s being drained. Three years ago, only 20% of Hong Kong banks’ Renminbi deposits were lent out; this year, it skyrocketed to over 90%.

At the Canton Fair, I saw a manager of an electric tricycle company from Jiangsu say that many foreign clients now proactively request to settle in Renminbi. It’s not initiated by the companies; it’s the clients who propose it. The number of clients choosing Renminbi has doubled. Demand is rising, but the pool can’t keep up. The Hong Kong Monetary Authority launched a liquidity injection tool of 100 billion yuan, which was snapped up by 40 banks. Three months later, it was urgently doubled to 200 billion. But these are ultimately emergency measures.

Why can’t the pool grow bigger? The fundamental reason is China’s economic structure—China is a surplus country, with Renminbi flowing back into China through trade, not flowing out. Why is the dollar everywhere? Because the U.S. is a deficit country, buying hundreds of billions of dollars worth of goods every year, and the dollar “spills” into the world along with the deficit. You can exchange dollars on Lagos streets, spend dollars at Bangkok night markets. Renminbi is exactly the opposite.

A commodities trader has been settling in dollars for the past ten years for Middle Eastern crude oil, but this year, for the first time, a client requested to pay in Renminbi. He spent three weeks researching how to do it, and concluded that opening an account takes six to eight weeks—his ship can’t wait. He said very plainly: “It’s not a technical problem; it’s that you have no channel.”

When the shipowner asked how to get Renminbi, the middleman replied with one word: gold. This is not just a metaphor. Arthur Hayes, a macro analyst in the crypto world, described a chain—countries sell U.S. Treasuries, buy gold with dollars, transport the gold to Switzerland for re-minting, deliver it to China’s gold market, exchange it for Renminbi, and transfer it through China’s cross-border payment system to Iran. Each link is independently established, and the causal relationships are inferred, but each link is supported by data.

This spring, the U.S. non-monetary gold exports became the largest export category in the U.S. Not chips, not airplanes, not soybeans—gold bars. Financial analyst Luke Gromen reviewed twenty years of U.S. trade records and said this pattern has never appeared before. Most of this gold flows to Switzerland. Switzerland has four major gold refineries—Valcambi, Argor-Heraeus, PAMP, and Metalor—they do one simple thing: melt gold bars from around the world and re-mint them into the Chinese-preferred 1-kilogram standard. In 2023, China was the largest buyer of Swiss gold exports, totaling 25.1 billion Swiss francs. In March this year, Swiss gold exports to China grew 18% compared to the previous quarter. In the same month, China’s central bank announced it had increased its gold holdings for the fifteenth consecutive month, reaching 2,308 tons.

The main reason for gold flowing out of the U.S. is the unwinding of the 2025 COMEX arbitrage trade, when due to tariff fears, 43.3 million ounces of gold flooded into New York warehouses. Now it’s starting to flow out. This is primarily a commercial activity. But the data points in the same direction—gold is flowing from West to East, serving as a primitive means of value transfer between two incompatible financial systems. Assets held in the dollar world are first converted into an “intermediate format”—gold—that both sides recognize, then reintroduced into the Renminbi world. When the Bretton Woods system was established eighty years ago, international settlement was done this way. After eighty years of sanctions and blockades, humanity has returned to the era of transporting metals.

Gold is a transitional solution. The real long-term plan is a payment channel most Chinese people are not very familiar with.

SWIFT is the “messaging system” between global banks. When you transfer money from China to Japan, SWIFT tells the Japanese bank that a payment is coming. SWIFT itself doesn’t move money; it only moves information. But whoever controls SWIFT can see every cross-border transaction worldwide in detail.

CIPS is China’s other system—Cross-Border Interbank Payment System. Unlike SWIFT, it can both send messages and move money, integrating messaging and clearing/settlement. Most of the time, CIPS still uses SWIFT to send messages—about 80% of transactions are like this. But the key is that it can operate independently when needed. When independent operation is required, CIPS can send messages and move money on its own.

In 2012, China’s central bank launched the construction of CIPS. Three years later, on October 8, 2015, the system officially went online. On that day, 19 banks connected; the world paid little attention. The first transaction completed on launch day was ICBC Singapore settling 35 million yuan for a company in Shanghai Baosteel. On the same day, Standard Chartered used CIPS to complete a Renminbi transfer from China to Luxembourg for IKEA. A Singaporean trader and a Swedish furniture company—this was the first batch of CIPS users.

By the end of this year, ten years later: 193 direct participants, 1,573 indirect participants, covering 124 countries and regions, processing $26.4 trillion annually. From 19 to 193, quietly growing tenfold. The list of CIPS shareholders is itself intriguing—central banks hold 16%, the rest include UnionPay, large state-owned banks, HSBC, Standard Chartered, Citibank, DBS, BNP Paribas, ANZ. It’s not a closed system but a hybrid led by China with Western banks participating. The expansion is still accelerating. Earlier this year, First Abu Dhabi Bank in the UAE joined CIPS as the Gulf region’s first Renminbi clearing bank—previously, settling in Renminbi in the Middle East required routing through Chinese domestic banks; now it can be done directly in Dubai.

DBS Bank’s China head once said, “Businesses have clear commercial reasons to use Renminbi—optimize cash management, reduce FX costs, and lower uncertainty.” This is not a geopolitical slogan. It’s accountants doing their math.

That Greek shipowner couldn’t buy Renminbi today, but that doesn’t mean he won’t be able to in three years. Channels are being opened one by one.

He didn’t end up getting Renminbi. It was too slow. Opening an account takes weeks, compliance reviews take weeks, and his ship can’t wait. He still paid with USDT. But he did one thing: after returning to Athens, he asked his CFO to research how to open a Renminbi account in Hong Kong. Not because he needs it today, but because he doesn’t want to face a situation next time where he has no options.

He’s not choosing sides. He just realizes that in this world, having only one track is too fragile. Opening another account, adding another channel— not because he distrusts the dollar, but because people who only have one way to go don’t feel secure.

The gold flowing out of the U.S. right now is being re-minted in Swiss refineries. They will turn into 1-kilogram standard bars in Shanghai’s delivery warehouses, then flow into a Renminbi channel. Maybe a payment from a Chinese company in the Middle East, or a routine import payment for Australian iron ore by a Shenzhen factory.

Not being able to buy Renminbi is the current reality. The pathways for dollars that might be cut off tomorrow are the ones that can’t be returned. And those who have already found the entry won’t go back. At least, that Greek shipowner won’t.