This would actually be an understatement. The Beijing leadership has done nothing to actively promote the eCNY platform. It is just an impossible task given the sheer power and acceptance of Alipay and WeChat.

"But, Beijing could just mandate its citizens - at a future date - to abandon those two platforms and only use the eCNY platform.” Here is the most comment response I receive when I make it clear that payments is a (semi) private affair.

My réponse, and the response that create a ton of anger among Europeans and Americans is as follows:

“If Beijing took NO action to mandate the Covid vaccine given that the popular response of doing so was well known in advance, then good luck if you actually expect a mandate to be made on people’s ability to make payments.”