Once again we are seeing articles and research papers stating the Chinese renminbi (yuan) is about to replace the dollar as the global reserve currency.
Here is a working paper by Arvind Subramanian and Martin Kessler at the Peterson Institute of International Economics stating The Renminbi Bloc is Here: Asia Down, Rest of the World to Go?.
A country's rise to economic dominance tends to be accompanied by its currency becoming a reference point, with other currencies tracking it implicitly or explicitly. For a sample comprising emerging market economies, we show that in the last two years, the renminbi (RMB) has increasingly become a reference currency which we define as one which exhibits a high degree of co-movement (CMC) with other currencies. In East Asia, there is already a RMB bloc, because the RMB has become the dominant reference currency, eclipsing the dollar, which is a historic development.