For several years now, China has implemented policies to promote the international use of its national currency, the Renminbi (RMB). As part of these efforts, the People's Bank of China (PBC) has negotiated 25 bilateral currency swap agreements (BSAs) with foreign central banks. These make it easier for firms in both China and its partner countries to settle cross‐border trade and direct investment in RMB. We seek to explain why China and these countries cooperate via BSAs. We theorize that trade and direct investment interdependence relate to dyadic BSA cooperation via two mechanisms: financing insulation from international liquidity shocks and reduced transaction costs of cross‐border exchange for local firms. Additionally, we expect the presence of preferential trade agreements (PTAs) and bilateral investment treaties (BITs) will increase the probability of dyadic BSA cooperation. BSAs are natural extensions of these existing agreements. They represent an additional layer of state‐level formal cooperation that further reduces barriers to cross‐border trade and direct investment. Our empirical analysis finds that both de facto trade interdependence and de jure economic integration via PTAs and BITs increase the probability of BSA cooperation between China and partners.

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Since 2008, the People's Bank of China has signed bilateral swap agreements (BSAs) with 35 foreign central banks. Collectively, these deals amount to nearly US$ 500 billion in Chinese renminbi (RMB) available to Beijing's foreign partners. What has led China to be so aggressive in its efforts to sign so many swap agreements? What are the political economic implications of the swap programme for the US‐centric global economic order? China's BSAs can be understood as a form of financial statecraft: the use of national financial and monetary capabilities to achieve foreign policy ends. China has deployed BSAs for both defensive and offensive reasons. Defensively, Beijing has sought to use BSAs to promote trade settlement in RMB thereby reducing China's vulnerability to the dollar's structural dominance in trade. Yet, as explained in this article, they have been ineffective in this regard. Offensively, Beijing has used BSAs as a short‐term liquidity backstop outside of the Bretton Woods institutions for partner countries in need. Here, there is greater potential for BSAs to impact the status quo economic order by enhancing Chinese economic influence. However, their potential is dependent on Beijing's willingness to act as a unilateral crisis lender and its ability to further internationalize the RMB.

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