EX-PBOC Official Says Digital Yuan Not Intended As Surveillance Tool

The Former Director at the People’s Bank of China (PBOC) recently announced that monitoring payments and surveillance were never the intention of China in the development of the Digital Yuan. He revealed that China started to develop the Digital Yuan to counter the impact of increasingly popular private payment platforms.

PBOC Official Says Digital Yuan is not Meant for Monitoring Payments

Yao Qian, the Former Director of the Digital  Currency Institute at the PBOC revealed during a panel at the International Finance Forum in Beijing that the development of Digital Yuan is going on to combat private payments platforms.

Jerome Powell said last month that the Digital Yuan is not going to work in the United States because it will be allowing the government to check every payment that is used in real-time and Yao’s recent comments were a refutation to the Federal Reserve Chair.

Yao, who was the first director of the digital currency institute established in 2016 said:

“Helping the government see all transactions in real-time was not the intention of the Chinese central bank. It’s necessary for central banks to innovate the legal fiat money in the face of the tides of digitalization.”

Need of Digital Currency at Present

The digital currency of China, the Digital Yuan at present, needs to achieve a balance between protecting and securing the privacy of its users and cracking down on criminal activities such as money laundering, tax evasion, and even the funding of terrorism. 

Yao, who is currently in the position of Director of the Science and Technology Supervision Bureau at the China Securities Regulatory Commission, laid an emphasis on the requirement of all the central banks to motivate the legit fiat currency in the face of the tides of digitization.