China backs Russia-proposed BRICS payment system

Tom Keatinge, the founding director of the Center for Finance and Security at the Royal United Services Institute, said China would be inclined to join the new financial system that Russia is advocating. He said Beijing's reasons are twofold: "to influence its design to ensure it can benefit" and "to add to its desire to provide counterbalance to the historically unipolar financial system dominated by the United States." Keatinge added, however, that the new infrastructure would not be able to easily replicate "the stability, liquidity and convertibility of the U.S. dollar" that a number of other existing bilateral and multilateral payment systems experience.