August 17, 2026 · Decision research
Dedollarization Brics
Finding
The weakest assumption is the binary description of China's capital account as effectively closed. China's own foreign-exchange authority reports meaningful RMB use in capital-account transactions, so the marginal diversification channel is real; it still has not become a reserve-currency replacement channel.
What changed
The evidence now separates three things that are often collapsed into one story: reserve shares, cross-border settlement, and safe-asset supply. The first is currently noisy and not one-way; the second is expanding; the third remains the binding constraint.
Decision
Change the action at the margin now, not the core stance. Keep the liquid dollar reserve and funding base, but stop treating dedollarization as dismissible narrative: make a measured hedge and a formal trigger-based review part of the policy. Do not make a strategic dollar exit or a large RMB substitution.
Watch next
Watch exchange-rate-adjusted IMF COFER shares, RMB reserve share and convertibility, official Treasury flows, euro safe-asset supply, and physical gold purchases. A persistent change across all five would justify a larger allocation change.