China's central bank digital currency to focus on retail payments first

Besides its use for the retail system in the country, the other CBDC’s goal is to enable cross-border payments for international financial institutions. These two goals will require different technical designs for the digital yuan, and China might expand its capabilities once it implements the digital payment function in retail.

However, China is a difficult environment to test out the new digital currency, according to the bank representative, and a country with a smaller population could be better since the cycle for currency circulation is shorter.