Respatialising finance : power, politics and offshore renminbi market making in London

"Respatialising finance positions international financial centres as vital, but often overlooked, analytical lenses through which to understand the changing position of Chinese finance within the international financial system and specifically the internationalisation of its currency, the renminbi (RMB). In so doing, I develop a revitalised reading of financial centres that places questions of the state, politics and power more centrally in both their own internal dynamics and in their role in shaping global finance. Since the 2007-8 financial crisis, the growing internationalisation of the RMB has been one of the most significant development within global monetary relations. Indeed, in 2014, Deutsche Bank argued that the internationalisation of the RMB was the most significant development in international monetary affairs since the launch of the Euro in 1999 (Deutsche Bank, 2014). It refers to the relatively rapid and recent transformation in the geography of the Chinese currency facilitated through Chinese state support in the form of the People's Bank of China in particular. This geography has been transformed from a situation in the early 2000s in which flows of RMB in and out of mainland China were heavily restricted to one in which by July 2020, it was the fifth most commonly used currency for payments internationally behind the US dollar, sterling, the Euro and the Yen (Swift, 2020). Meanwhile, the growing international status of the RMB was also reflected in the International Monetary Fund including the RMB in its basket of special drawing rights (SDR) from October 2016 together with the US dollar, the euro, the yen and sterling. Kirschner (2014 p.220) provides a valuable summary of the early motivations and uncertainties surrounding RMB internationalisation."