Microsoft founder and world's richest man Bill Gates said recently: "I love dollars, but I’m betting on the yuan." 

In the past, those who scrutinized the internationalization of the RMB mainly came from the financial institutions and academia, but Bill Gates' enthusiasm for the yuan shows that the internationalization of the RMB has had a noticeable impact on global big businesses and the international monetary system.

Since China launched the pilot RMB settlement of cross-border trades in July, 2009, progress in internationalization of RMB has generated expectations at home and abroad.

The latest data released by the Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication (SWIFT) show that the RMB had become the world's fifth-largest currency of payment by March this year. In October 2014 British Treasury issued its debut RMB bond of 3 billion and the revenues will be incorporated into country's foreign exchange reserves. Britain became the first foreign country to issue yuan-denominated treasury bond.

At present, China has signed currency swap agreements with some 30 countries or regions, totaling 3 trillion yuan. The RMB has become the foreign exchange reserve of the central bank in a number of countries, and offshore RMB centers have been set up in Hong Kong, Singapore, London, Frankfurt and Toronto, covering Asia, Europe and the North America, which has promoted the internationalization of the RMB.

In recent years, China's capital account has accelerated its opening up and the openness of RMB under the current account and the capital account is improving steadily. International observers increasingly believe that the yuan now basically meets the standard of "freely tradable".

This year the International Monetary Fund (IMF), will discuss the issue of including the yuan in the SDR (Special Drawing Right) basket - currently made up of dollars, euros, pounds and yen. If it is incorporated the RMB will become the first emerging currency in the SDR basket, which indicates that China's currency has made significant headway in internationalization and therefore more and more countries will use RMB as a reserve currency.

Since the outbreak of the global financial crisis in 2008, the international community has realized that the dollar-based international monetary system is unstable. Diversification will be the direction of the future trend in the international monetary system, and the internationalization of the RMB is in the inherent interests of global financial stability.

Bill Gates and other entrepreneurs are optimistic about the yuan, as are more and more countries and international organizations. This shows that the international community has confidence in the long-term prospects of China's economy.

This article was edited and translated from 《从比尔•盖茨看好人民币说起》, source: People's Daily