For most of the past seventy years China has played a relatively small role in the global monetary landscape. It was inward looking, focused on its own domestic economic development and the monumental task of lifting hundreds of millions of its people from poverty. Its currency, the renminbi, was barely used outside of its borders and its banking system has been insulated from the world and heavily reliant on Hong Kong, China, the world’s third largest financial center, for raising capital and for facilitating much of its financial interactions. Furthermore, through its large volume of trade with the US and other major economies China has been able to accumulate more than $3 trillion in foreign exchange reserves. Its trade surplus with the US allowed it to purchase roughly one fifth of US foreign debt, becoming America’s number one creditor nation. As long as the two countries were in friendly terms and their economies closely intertwined there was no reason for China to question the status quo. But this is no longer the case. Thanks to the size of its market, its growing volume of trade with the rest of the world and its technological advancement China’s role in the global economy is increasing. This rapid ascendance has alarmed Washington, leading to a sea-change in its attitude toward Beijing. China is no longer viewed by the US as an economic partner but as a strategic competitor whose rise must be curbed. Republicans and Democrats are equally committed to deny China critical technologies, to transform US-China trade relations and to pressure Beijing to undergo structural changes. This means that the new approach toward China is not a passing phenomenon but the “new normal” for many years to come. The trade war, the blacklisting of Chinese technology companies and the arbitrary designation of China as currency manipulator have all brought Beijing to reevaluate its relations with the US and to rethink the wisdom of increasing its exposure to the US dollar. What could make China less dependent on the American currency is the fact that it enjoys today growing international acceptance of the renminbi. Since the International Monetary Fund in 2016 formally added the renminbi to its Special Drawing Rights (SDR) basket, more than 60 countries have included it in their reserve currency portfolio and the number is growing. The internationalization of the renminbi is today a key element in China’s “going out” strategy. The share of the renminbi held by central banks’ foreign currency reserves is already two percent and growing steadily, while the percentage of the dollar has dropped from 72 percent in 2000 to 62 percent now.[1] But the road for the renminbi to become a tier-1 currency in par with the dollar or the euro is still long and its rise would depend not only on China’s policies but even to a greater extent on the decisions made in the coming years in Washington and Brussels.