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this post was submitted on 05 Jan 2026
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I'd really like to see China put sanctions on the US over this.
Can they do it? Without control of the reserve currency?
I don't see what the reserve currency has to do with this. China effectively has a monopoly on production of many essential goods that the US needs. They can just choose to stop exporting them.
What is with the obsession over the reserve currency lately? I had a lib friend randomly spouting off about how China could never hold the reserve currency for... reasons? In response to me saying I might need to learn mandarin to flee eventually as well (I'm joking, I know I could probably never make it happen).
I don't really get it either, seems like another bit of mythology about American greatness people memorized and are now regurgitating uncritically.
Which is, of course, quite silly. I'm guessing that a counter-hegemonic financial system has already been developed and is very much an active part of the strategy of surviving as a socialist project while global capitalism exists. I just haven't tried to understand that fully yet. I appreciate any insight you or anyone else might have.
Yeah, the pivotal point was Russia getting kicked out of SWIFT. That forced a creation of an alternate financial system out of necessity, and over past three years it's expanded significantly within BRICS. The reality is that you don't need to have a reserve currency, you can just do direct currency swaps. But more importantly, China is basically the world's factory, and has a massive trade surplus with the rest of the world. Which means holding yuan is useful for other countries, since they can always exchange it for something tangible they need.
Thank you! That is very helpful as a launching point to read about this. Intuitively, what I asked my liberal friend was, "is a reserve currency even necessary?" Turns out, neither of us knows anything about this. They're just arrogant lmao
glad to help :)