The digital yuan has been rolled out for four years, and many people have received digital yuan salaries, which they use to pay utility bills, parking bills, and even taxes. According to the "Implementation Plan for the Construction of Digital Human Society" issued by the Ministry of Human Resources and Social Security, social security cards may also be equipped with digital yuan payment functions in the future.
Despite the increasingly rich use scenarios of the digital yuan, there are still many people who have doubts: what exactly is the digital yuan? What is the difference with WeChat Pay and Alipay? What impact will the popularization of the digital yuan have on people's lives and economic development? The Paper invited Qin Xuan, Ph.D. in accounting from Fudan University, to talk about digital RMB and digital economy.
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What is the digital yuan
@默博博: What is the relationship between the digital yuan and the renminbi? Will over-issuing digital yuan cause inflation?
Qin Xuan: First of all, the digital yuan is the legal digital currency of the mainland, that is, the digital form of legal tender (RMB). In terms of form, the RMB can be divided into digital RMB and physical RMB, both of which have the same legal status and economic value, are issued and mainly managed by People's Bank of China, so they coexist for a long time. Secondly, the digital yuan is mainly positioned in cash payment vouchers (M0), that is, to meet the public's demand for digital cash, which can reduce the cost of currency issuance and improve the operation efficiency and security of currency and payment systems.
Since December 2022, the digital yuan has been included in the statistics of currencies in circulation (M0), and its excessive number will indeed bring inflation problems, so the People's Bank of China has taken a series of measures to avoid the over-issuance of the digital yuan. For example, the digital yuan does not pay interest and is mainly used for retail payments to reduce competition with bank deposits. The digital yuan wallet sets the upper limit of transaction amount and wallet balance to prevent the risk of runs; Through big data analysis and risk monitoring and early warning framework, to improve the predictability, accuracy and effectiveness of digital RMB management (refer to People's Bank of China White Paper on R&D Progress of China's Digital RMB issued by the Digital RMB R&D Working Group).
@geju: The digital yuan is centralized and book-keeping. But now that almost all RMB transactions are paperless, and bank transfers are also bookkeeping, what is the difference between this and digital RMB?
Qin Xuan: As a legal digital currency, the digital yuan is a liability of the central bank to the public, which does not pay interest and does not charge service fees to individual customers, which is legally compensable; The object of bank transfer is our bank deposits, which are affected by the operation of the banking system in terms of interest rates, transfer fees, and arrival time. It is worth noting that the digital yuan, like banknotes and coins in circulation, can transfer value without relying on bank accounts, and supports dual offline payment, with the characteristics of "payment is settlement", which makes the digital yuan technically closer to the attributes of cash. Bank transfer does not support dual offline payment, and needs to be cleared and settled through UnionPay/Netlink, and both parties must open real-name accounts. The digital yuan also supports controllable anonymity of "small amounts of anonymity and large amounts traceable according to law", which is conducive to protecting personal privacy and user information security.
@牛斗之墟: The promotion of digital yuan is accelerating, are there any advantages of using digital yuan compared to traditional settlement methods?
Qin Xuan: The design of digital RMB takes into account the advantages of physical RMB and electronic payment tools, including the following aspects: First, convenience and low cost. Digital RMB and bank account are loosely coupled, support dual offline transactions, can adapt to various online and offline payment environments, and can also reduce the intermediate links and handling fees of settlement, so payment is settlement, so digital RMB settlement can reduce transaction costs and improve the efficiency of currency and payment system operation. 2. Anonymity. The digital RMB system collects less transaction information than the traditional electronic payment mode, and is not provided to third parties or other government departments unless expressly provided by laws and regulations, which is conducive to protecting personal privacy and user information security. 3. Security. Digital RMB settlement adopts advanced technologies such as blockchain to achieve the characteristics of non-repeated spending, non-illegal copying and counterfeiting, non-tampering of transactions and anti-repudiation, which can effectively prevent payment risks and fraud. Fourth, platform. Different types of digital RMB wallets can meet the differentiated needs of users, and the establishment of the digital RMB wallet ecological platform can provide users with rich experiences in different usage scenarios.
@澎湃网友JJzuI3: Why is the current digital currency construction not very fast?
Qin Xuan: After all, the digital yuan is a new thing, and the People's Bank of China is following the principles of stability, safety, controllability, innovation and practicality, and selects some representative regions to carry out pilot tests of the digital yuan to assess its comprehensive impact on the economy and finance. In fact, from the perspective of the whole world, the mainland is the first country to launch a sovereign digital currency, but in order to move towards large-scale popularization, the digital yuan still needs to deal with a series of issues, such as the stability and reliability of the digital yuan, the continuous use of users, the incentive for commercial banks and other institutions, and how to balance the relationship with third-party payments such as WeChat and Alipay.
About data assets and the digital economy
@林梓瀚: What is the definition of data assetization? What is the impact of data assets on the economic development of the market and the general public? Can my personal data be used as my asset?
Qin Xuan: What is data assetization, according to a serious definition, data assetization is the process of organizing data resources and supporting services into identifiable forms that can bring measurable value in internal and external markets, which may be a bit too awkward, then in layman's terms, data assetization is to turn data into an asset of ours, just like our cars, houses, etc. are our assets. Now data has become a production factor for market development, and our country is also building a data factor market, which is a good thing for the country, for enterprises, and even for individuals as a whole. For the government, when land finance tends to be weak, the development of data assets can promote the implementation of data finance, bringing more tax revenue and fiscal revenue. For enterprises, once data is used as an asset, it will bring more room for appreciation in future investment and financing.
For individuals, data assetization is conducive to the formation of new personal assets. Through institutional arrangements such as right confirmation authorization, circulation transactions, revenue distribution and security governance, personal data can bring benefits to the public and form new personal assets. The premise of data assetization is to do a good job in data rights confirmation, operation management, value measurement and other issues, so if we can solve these problems for personal data, it can become our personal assets. However, data assetization is still in the beginning stage, because data and houses, cars are different, data can be copied indefinitely, once not handled well is easy to cause bubbles, so data assetization in the social welfare but also there are certain risks, but also need to continue to explore and develop, so as to enter the next stage of data assetization - data capitalization.
@FREA: Is it possible that the data left by individuals on the Internet, including WeChat chat records, become a priceable asset in the future?
Qin Xuan: It is now a big problem to confirm the right to personal data, especially whether individuals can claim their own data rights from platform enterprises, which is currently difficult to solve. Why? In the era of big data, enterprises generally use massive data for data fusion application, which is so large that it is difficult to judge the role and role of specific personal data in it, which also makes it difficult for individuals to directly claim economic benefits from platform enterprises. At present, the state is also slowly exploring and adjusting, through the design of the data element income distribution system, to achieve the development of platform enterprises and drive the improvement of personal income.
@林梓瀚: How much does the digital economy contribute to a country's GDP? How will the mainland plan the development of the digital economy in the future?
Qin Xuan: In order to reasonably measure the contribution of the digital economy to GDP, we need to clarify the scope of the digital economy and relevant accounting methods. In this regard, please refer to the Statistical Classification of Digital Economy and Its Core Industries (2021) issued by the National Bureau of Statistics. Based on the above classification framework, the "China Digital Economy Development Research Report (2023)" released by the China Academy of Information and Communications Technology shows that the proportion of the mainland's digital economy to GDP will reach 41.5% in 2022, and the scale and proportion of the mainland's digital economy will show a steady growth trend from 2017 to 2022. This shows the importance of the digital economy in promoting the high-quality development of the mainland economy. At the end of 2021, the State Council issued the 14th Five-Year Plan for the Development of the Digital Economy, which clarified several guiding ideas and development goals for the future development of the digital economy. First of all, the digital economy takes data resources as the key element, so the establishment of the data element market system is the focus of the development of the digital economy and the difficulty it is currently facing. Secondly, to give full play to the mainland's advantages in massive data and rich application scenarios, it is inseparable from the deep integration of digital technology and the real economy, which is also reflected in the two major parts of the core industries of the digital economy - digital industrialization and industrial digitalization, so the innovation investment and support service system for both will continue to strengthen. Finally, the development of the digital economy and the construction of digital society and digital government will penetrate each other and promote the unity of fairness and efficiency, so the mainland also emphasizes digital public services and digital economy governance system in the development plan of digital economy.