Comment by maxglute | Hacker News Reader

Comment by maxglute | Hacker News Reader

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Petro-yuan =/= reserve currency.

USD reserve = print USD for everything liquidity to sustain debt financed existence where Triffin hollows out industry, and financialize everything because having stupid amount of liquidity incentivizes certain behaviors.

Petro-yuan = PRC gives swap lines to trusted partners to buy oil denominated in yuan in exchange for things like resources. Hormuz ships ~1 trillion USD worth energy that needs "swapping" - incidentally PRC imports around ~2-3 trillion, more than enough to cover.

So think petro-yuan = PRC gives trusted countries with resources that PRC bonds credit lines to buy yuan denominated energy (possibly at discount), in return they guarantee PRC resources or other commercial/geopolitical arrangements. It will be narrow, not like USD brrrting reserves.

This benefits PRC because get to have leverage over "need" transactions (countries need energy to survive, it's no negotiate) while US keeps supporting "want" transactions by reserve debt servicing blackhole that US cannot extricate itself from until it debases / technical defaults. PRC best game plan is... assume privileged part of exorbitant privilege, while leaving US the exorbitant.

The problem with that plan is that no one wants to trade hard commodities for a currency that can’t be spent. One part of the dollars appeal is that it spends the world over. The sanctioned countries frequently have more liberal access to dollars than to unsanctioned yuan.

So no one is going to take up a lot of yuan trade unless that changes or they are forced to.

But that puts China in a bind. Liberalizing their currency is going to require very careful and slow actions, China threads this needle now in a very fraught way. If they openly start trading oil at any real size in yuan that will break their peg as you’ll be able to trade through the oil markets.

This is the main reason there isn’t more petro yuan already, it’s bad for China.

> The problem with that plan is that no one wants to trade hard commodities for a currency that can’t be spent. One part of the dollars appeal is that it spends the world over.

> So no one is going to take up a lot of yuan trade unless that changes or they are forced to.

Related on the “forced to”point, this is where Russia is stuck with its crude oil sales to India where the payments have been made to it in Indian Rupees. There’s almost nothing that Russia can do with the Indian Rupee. This is a huge and growing problem because India’s imports from Russia eclipse its exports to Russia by more than 10 times. [1]

[1]: https://www.financialexpress.com/india-news/india-russia-sum...

Unlike China, a country whose exports to other countries dwarfs their exports. The yuan is much more valuable than the rupee (which is turning to trash with each passing month as a net effect of trade wars and oil crises).

You can buy from China though. And China is the largest import trading partner for the majority of countries in the world. They literally don't need to do anything to prop up a "petro-yuan".

You can’t largely. At least not with offshore yuan. To do that you have to go through the controlled settlement channels to get onshore yuan. That’s tightly controlled to protect the peg.

So no one is going to use a controlled currency for a hard liquid commodity. So if China wants petro yuan they have to liberalize that, which will break their peg.

China could have more international trade in the yuan before all of Americas recent misadventures. But that has cast consequences for their economy, and possibly the ruling elites power structures.

Saudi Arabia was literally negotiating with China for payments in yuan for petroleum way before the war started, in 2023. The Gulf countries' largest trading partner is China - such a transaction is effectively a barter enabling programme. Russia and now Iran already accept yuan.

The mainland vs offshore renminbi restrictions disappear in Hong Kong, Singapore, etc. where most mainland Chinese trading companies and otherwise have offices anyways. Trading offshore to onshore renminbi becomes their problem, one that they are fairly accustomed to.

The negotiations were literally about how to manage the currency risk to Riyadh. And none of the offshore trading houses are handling the currency transactions at the size necessary to handle large oil transactions.

This is as near an iron law as there is economics, you can’t keep a peg and have a large trade in a large liquid commodity market. China is trying to slowly thread this needle and they can get away with it with Iran and Russia because they are approaching vassal status because the petrodollars are closed to them. Everyone in the world can see this and wants to avoid it.

If you are an oil producer what you want is to diversify your currency risk. Right now China is _preventing_ this, because there is no way for them to become a major player in that market without huge impact on their economy and probably their political system.

Very interesting, 2 different yuan’s!

  - offshore yuan
  - onshore yuan

Do you have more details on this? A book, a blog, an article?

Do a google search for “cnh vs cny forex”

> The problem with that plan is that no one wants to trade hard commodities for a currency that can’t be spent

You can't spend US dollars either, in 99% of the world.

> a currency that can’t be spent

You can spend it in China, right?

If they let you when you want to.

One big thing that has prevented CNY from becoming a reserve currency is that China has explicitly said it wants to preserve its ability to heavily and suddenly restrict capital flows in and out of China. If all of a sudden you can't redeem CNY outside of China inside it that makes it a very poor storage of value.

You actually mean CNH as per https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47577249

CNY is internal to China! See https://simplefx.com/education/usdcnh-differences-between-ch...

To be clear cnh is a convention while cny is the iso standard.

Literally buy from PRC... most of worlds largest trade partner. That's why the system should work, it's closed loop. And we know world aktually fine with yuan denominated trade since PRC increased yuan settlement from 10 to >50% in a few years after US went sanction happy. PRC basically super costco, apart from chips and commercial aviation (both coming) they sell everything country needs for modernity, at discount.

They do not need to liberalize currency. They just need to have stuff people want, and leverage to force them to transact in PRC preferred currency. Previously this was hard, PRC had goods, and affordable prices = reduce friction/switching cost vs USD liquidity, but USD liquidity still made USD transaction preferred. PRC had no leverage for others to transact in yuan.

But in persistent high global energy environment, if PRC controls basically global supply of cheap renewables... and 30% of GCC oil vs Iran enforcing petro-yuan, they have stupid leverage to snow ball system. Again key is this for 30% of GCC oil exports if Iran locks down (big if), it's not global petro-yuan, it's Costco membership only access petro-yuan.

30% of global oil is inelastic existential survival leverage, if PRC wanted to charge in blowjobs countries would pay in blowjobs, currency liberalization doesn't matter when selling water in desert.

For that 30% control number to make any sense you have to believe that: the gulf states are going to allow Iran to control their existential oil trade long term, that they will do so in the face of a currency getting manipulated adversarially against them, that no manufacturing bases can be built up to be alternatives and that none of that is going to have major impacts on the economy or political elites in China.

All of that happening with the worlds biggest oil producer, its second biggest manufacturer, who is food independent and has the worlds most powerful military just lets it happen. And no shooting war breaking out between them.

I’m betting on slow currency liberalization and a transition to a multi currency petroleum industry and subsequent inefficiencies in global trade. But feel free to bet how you want.

I am not betting on one or other happening, I am simply stating, the downstream effect of Iran being able to hold onto Hormuz, i.e. by outlasting US political will create conditions for GCC petro-yuan. Which may not be out of question because we're not in nothing ever happens world anymore.

> make any sense

GCC petro-yuan scenario is predicated on BIG IF that Iran can control Hormuz oil. Rest is the downstream logic for ~10 years, i.e. before any alternative buildout/pivot by GCC states to some how insulate... which apart from Saudi, they might not (too small). This also why PRC hasn't exactly enthusiastically signed up despite IR offer, because it would burn GCC bridge when IR fate uncertain. But if alternative is IR can hold hormuz hostage, PRC would rather participate in petro-yuan than not, at which point having priority access to energy, possibly at discount is net win. Note in this case IR as SLOC guard dog actually has leverage over PRC, gating energy access also offer PRC cannot refuse.

> US

Hence big if, if US has appetite and capability to break Iran, and it matters US settlement/conditions, because if US reasserts control over Hormuz oil and tries to throttle PRC oil as victory, then PRC may go all in on Iran support. Situation is fluid, the wild card is in fact US or ISR deciding to simply break GCC oil. There is still plenty of room for escalation and shenanigans.

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