MORE MONEY: How China enables American domination.

Never has the gap in financial power between the world’s two largest economies been this wide. Follow the list of empires from the US down through Britain, France, the Netherlands and back to the 15th century. Usually, the emerging challenger built broad strengths from military to trade. China is typical in every way except finance. Unlike rival currencies past and present, the renminbi is far from fully convertible and has gained little traction as an international currency.

Normally after an empire gains economic might, its currency takes an increasing share of reserves held by central banks. With a 17 per cent share of global GDP, but only 2 per cent of central bank reserves, China is trailing 30 to 40 years behind previous superpowers at a similar stage of their ascents.

Likewise in trade, as an emerging power gains ground, the rest of the world accepts more payments in its currency — even if the new power is not directly involved in the transaction. Britain at its peak accounted for 40 per cent of trade, but 60 per cent of trade payments were in sterling. China by contrast has a leading 15 per cent share of global trade, but only 2 per cent of trade bills are invoiced in renminbi.

Much more at the link. But the TL;DR is that nobody trusts China — China is asshoe.