Yaya J. Fanusie & Emily Jin
Introduction
The Chinese party-state views data and the internet as integral to its control, partic- ularly in the ways they enable social surveillance.1 The electronic Chinese yuan (e- CNY)2 is a new financial infrastructure that aligns with this technological approach. Since the inception of the People’s Republic of China’s (PRC’s) central bank digital currency (CBDC) project in 2014, the e-CNY has evolved from academic research to systematic, nationwide piloting.3 The e-CNY pilots are gradually rolling out new func- tions for the currency. Although current adoption is relatively small compared to China’s economy, the pilots point toward a major shift in the Chinese financial tech- nology (fintech) ecosystem. The e-CNY architecture is innovating on China’s payment system by enabling software wallets with smart contracts by which transactions can operate according to predetermined conditions and parameters. This money “program- mability” can benefit users by allowing individuals and companies to manage and mon- itor economic transactions more easily.
But the programmability of the e-CNY also imbues the party-state with powerful new capacities. The Chinese government is strategically inserting its digital renminbi into a variety of domestic activities to make its economy more intelligible to and con- trollable by the Chinese party-state.4 In this context, the party-state and media that report on its policies use the term intelligible to mean that complex financial phenomena can be understood via quantifiable metrics from an increasingly information-ripe, dig- itized, and data-rich environment. While the party-state has used intelligentization in its military doctrine since 2016 to describe its strategy of integrating advanced technolo- gies into its military, the term has been extended to the process of integrating and lev- eraging data within China’s national development strategy.5 Terms like digitized and in- telligentized are not mere jargon but, rather, precise expressions of the party state’s tech- nocratic vision for the country. The party-state wants to fully harness financial infor- mation in its economy, and the e-CNY is one of the many tools to accomplish that goal. For Chinese authorities, collecting troves of financial data is key to realizing their vision of a more manageable, more monitorable, wholly digital China
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