China's Digital Yuan Failed. Europe's Digital Euro Team Should Read the Autopsy.

China ran the world's largest CBDC trial, with years of pilots, state backing, and a billion-user payments market to learn from — and still couldn't get ordinary people to use the digital yuan. Now the People's Bank of China is resorting to interest payments to nudge adoption. With EU lawmakers potentially adopting digital euro legislation in 2026 and issuance not expected before 2029, European policymakers have a rare gift: someone else's failure, in forensic detail, before they make the same mistakes.

What happened in China In February 2026, the Peterson Institute for International Economics published a blunt post-mortem: "China gives up on state-backed digital cash: The US and Europe should take note." That title tells you most of what you need to know about the state of the digital yuan — officially called the e-CNY — after years of trials, government mandates, and considerable political will. The People's Bank of China had released a detailed action plan to strengthen the structure, rules, and financial infrastructure behind the digital yuan. Yet even that level of institutional effort could not move the needle on everyday adoption. Winston Ma, an adjunct law lecturer at New York University, put it plainly: "e-CNY has undergone extensive trials, but it has still failed to create regular users." The PBOC's latest move to rescue the project is striking precisely because of what it concedes. Starting January 1,…

China's Digital Yuan Failed. Europe's Digital Euro Team Should Read the Autopsy.

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