China is ramping up efforts to introduce its central bank’s national digital currency and has now left its global competitors far behind, CNBC writes.

China’s digital yuan may well challenge the dollar’s dominance as the preferred currency in international trade settlements in five to 10 years, as predicted by former banker, author and financial technology consultant Richard Turrin, who wrote the book “Cashless: China’s Digital Currency Revolution.”

“Remember that China is the largest country in global trade, and you will see the digital yuan gradually displace the dollar in purchases in China,” Turrin said Monday. – Looking ahead, five to 10 years from now, the digital yuan can play a significant role in reducing the use of the dollar in international trade.”

Many countries’ pursuit of alternative payment systems is likely due to their desire to reduce their current, “basically 100 percent” dependence on the dollar, he said. We may well see a slow decline in dollar dependence from 100% to 85-85% in the future.

Meanwhile, while the U.S. will need about 5 more years just to plan and test a potential digital dollar, which the White House is already thinking about implementing, although the Federal Reserve has not yet decided to issue a digital dollar, China has been preparing for its use since 2014. This task there is entrusted to the People’s Bank of China: the world’s second largest economy is now a decade ahead of all available financial technology.

But it is unlikely that Beijing, according to Turrin, will use its “newborn” currency to bail out Russia in the face of sanctions, although it put all the blame for the current Ukrainian conflict on the United States and refused to call Russia’s special operation “aggression.” “The digital yuan is a baby in the sense that it is in the testing phase but has not yet been launched domestically or tested on an international basis,” Turrin explained.

“China wants to eventually achieve widespread acceptance of the digital yuan, and turning it into an anti-sanctions tool now that it is still a ‘baby’ will not help achieve that goal,” Turrin said.