Beijing Plans Digital Yuan Giveaway For Chinese New Year

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Last Updated on 10 February 2021 by CryptoTips.eu

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This week marks Chinese New Year. The Year of the Ox, which according to a famous legend, is the second animal on the Chinese zodiac because of a trick that the Rat played on the Ox.

The legendary Jade Emperor had stated to his court scribes that the ranking of zodiac animals was to be decided by the order in which the animals he had invited would arrive to his party. The Ox was about to enter the palace first, but Rat tricked Ox into giving him a ride. Then, just as they arrived, Rat jumped down and landed ahead of Ox.

In this manner, Ox became the second animal.

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Travel ban

There is a caveat in this year’s New Year celebrations in China though. Because of fear the coronavirus might spread again, the government in Beijing has ordered its citizens to celebrate at home with their direct families only, banning more than a billion planned trips.

Unlike in Europe and the US, Chinese citizens tend to follow their government’s orders and thus several hundreds of millions will not be travelling. In order to ease the pain, the local government in the Chinese capital Beijing will be handing out $1.5 million in a limited trial of the central bank’s digital currency, the so-called Digital Yuan.

The somewhat smaller cities of Shenzhen and Suzhou held similar experiments in the last few months, but now it is the turn of the capital. The Wall Street Journal recently noted the experiments in a video, hoping to nudge the Joe Biden administration into developing a digital currency for the US as well of course.

YouTube video

During the pandemic, China saw that its citizens have switched completely to digital payments. Mobile pay, primarily through the Alibaba-affiliated Alipay app or Tencent’s Wechat Pay, is massively replacing cash as the predominant form of payment in the Middle Kingdom.

Some 50,000 lucky Chinese, carefully picked beforehand of course, will receive about 200 yuan or $30 to spend on whatever they like, as long as they download the official government app and post their spending on social media. There is no denying that the Beijing government knows how to stir popularity for its new digital form of payment among Chinese.