The offshore yuan hovered near 6.69 per dollar on Friday, holding at its strongest level since July 2022 as China stepped up efforts to elevate the currency’s global role. Beijing is expanding the range of investment products and financial instruments linked to the yuan, including derivatives and hedging tools, while also easing access to dim sum and panda bond issuance. These moves are part of a broader push to grow offshore-yuan investment channels, deepen yuan-denominated financing, and enhance cross-border clearing and settlement infrastructure.
At the same time, sentiment remained cautious amid ongoing China–EU trade frictions. The European Union is weighing new powers to curb access to its single market and is closely reviewing import data for signs of sharp increases, a preliminary step toward potentially imposing quotas on additional categories of goods. Beijing has warned it will retaliate against any fresh EU trade measures or discriminatory restrictions on Chinese companies or products that go beyond the hybrid vehicle export cap agreed last week.
