Top Russian Banker: China’s Yuan and Belt and Road Initiative Are the Wave of the Future

Speaking last Tuesday, May 23, at the Russian-Chinese Business Forum in Shanghai, Herman Gref, the head of Russia’s largest state-owned bank, Sber, said that the yuan is rapidly coming to dominate Russian-Chinese trade. The share of the yuan in Russia’s export settlements jumped from 2% to 18% and in import payments from 5% to 27% over the past year, according to Gref. “In 2023, we expect a tenfold increase in the number of transactions in yuan compared to last year,” he said.