It took Russia just a few months from the beginning of the war to break into the top three countries in terms of using the Chinese yuan in international settlements. This is evidenced by the open statistics of the SWIFT system of international settlements, which drew attention to the Reuters agency.
According to the results of July, Russia accounted for 3.9% of all transactions in the yuan, only the United Kingdom with a share of 6.35% and the traditional leader in the rating of settlements - Hong Kong (70.93%) were higher than Russia. The top 5 countries that actively use the yuan in settlements also included Singapore with a share of 3.77% and the United States (2.98%).
Statistics from SWIFT calculations that Russia's growth turned out to be rapid - until April 2022, it was not at all in the SWIFT rating. In April, Russia entered the rankings for the first time with the share of the yuan in international settlements at just 0.62%. Already in May, Russia broke into the top ten with a share of 0.79%, in June - in the top 7 with a share of 1.42%. Thus, in just a few months, dependence on the yuan in international settlements soared by almost 6.3 times.
Yuan ranks fifth in the ranking of the most popular currencies for international settlements with a share of 2.2%. The most popular currency in the world remains the US dollar (41.19%), the euro is in second place (35.49%), the British pound sterling (35.49%) closes the top three, the fourth place is left for the Japanese yen with a share of 2.82 %. Despite all the attempts of the Russian authorities to increase the volume of international trade in national currencies, the Russian ruble is not in the rating. The last time it was ranked by SWIFT was in 2021, and its share was estimated at about 0.3%.
The Chinese currency is increasingly penetrating into the Russian trade turnover, the Russian authorities intend to turn the yuan into the main alternative to the currencies of "unfriendly countries" and accumulate their reserves in it. Economic actors and currency speculators are actively using the "pivot to the east", on August 18, for the first time, the yuan overtook the US dollar in terms of trading volumes on the Moscow Exchange.