"The China Price: Beijing’s Green Path to Ending Dollar Dominance" - by CWP alum Zongyuan Zoe Liu

In 1971, as the international monetary system was on the brink of collapse, U.S. Treasury Secretary John Connally told a group of worried European finance ministers that the dollar was “our currency, but your problem.” The dollar had become that system’s official reserve currency in 1944, under the Bretton Woods agreement, making signatories subject to the whims of U.S. monetary policy. Even after Bretton Woods collapsed and many currencies floated freely, the dollar continued to dominate. In the last half century, U.S. currency power has only expanded, as more countries have integrated into the global economy and therefore

November/December 2026 Published on October 20, 2026

Zongyuan Zoe Liu is Maurice R. Greenberg Senior Fellow for China Studies at the Council on Foreign Relations and Senior Research Scholar at the Institute for Global Politics at Columbia University’s School of International and Public Affairs. She is the author of Sovereign Funds: How the Communist Party of China Finances Its Global Ambitions.

Photo Credit: https://www.foreignaffairs.com/china/china-price-zongyuan-zoe-liu