At a seminar marking the 10th anniversary of the 'One Belt, One Road' initiative in Hong Kong, Daniel Fung Wah-kin said that, in the past, China was “forced to buy oil from Angola because Saudi Arabia was practically a United States monopoly.”
Angola became, in 2010, China's main oil supplier and, according to a UN database, the peak of Angolan crude exports to the Chinese market was reached in 2012: 33.6 billion dollars .
However, in the first half of 2023, Angola was only China's ninth main oil supplier, on a list led by Russia, Saudi Arabia and Brazil, according to data from the Chinese General Administration of Customs.
Daniel Fung said that Saudi Arabia's role as an oil exporter to China could be reinforced if it decides to sell crude to the Chinese market using the renminbi.
Last year, Saudi Finance Minister Mohammed al-Jadaan said the kingdom was considering selling some of its oil to China in renminbi, despite its currency – the rial – being linked to the US dollar.
In December, Chinese President Xi Jinping said at a summit with Persian Gulf leaders in Saudi Arabia that China would seek to acquire oil and natural gas from the region using the renminbi.
For Daniel Fung, the acquisition of oil from Saudi Arabia would give “a huge boost to the internationalization” of the Chinese currency, giving the United Arab Emirates and Brazil as other examples.
In March, China concluded the first purchase of fossil fuels from the United Arab Emirates with renminbis, having purchased 65 thousand tons of liquefied natural gas.
In April, the Brazilian branch of the Industrial and Commercial Bank of China (ICBC) processed the first cross-border transaction in Chinese currency, two months after the two countries' central banks signed a renminbi clearing agreement.
Brazilian oil exports to China grew 49 percent in the first half of 2023, compared to last year's average, according to data from the Chinese General Administration of Customs.
In April, the President of Brazil, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, attacked, in Shanghai, the dominance of the dollar as the world's reserve currency and called for the use of other currencies in the commercial relationship between Brazil and China.
In March, for the first time, China carried out more cross-border transactions with its currency than with the dollar.
