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China & The EU: Central Bank Digital Currency Projects & the Pursuit of Geoeconomic Autonomy
Teague, Sarah
Teague, Sarah
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Abstract
The decline of cash and the recent rise of alternative currencies and digital payment solutions have led many states to consider developing a central bank digital currency, or CBDC, as an instrument to combat the fragmentation and destabilization risks presented by these instruments. China and the European Union (EU) are two of the largest advanced economies with active CBDC projects underway, albeit at different stages of development. As of late 2025, China’s e-CNY is actively deployed both domestically and internationally within the wholesale multi-CBDC platform, mBridge. At the same time, the EU’s digital euro is presently in the legislative phase with a domestic public issuance target date of 2029. Additionally, the EU is in the exploratory phase for a wholesale central bank tokenization platform, Project Agorá. Given this emergent domain and escalating geopolitical conditions, this paper asks the research question, Through which modalities do China and the EU deploy digital monetary power in their respective digital currency projects, and what do these behavioral patterns reveal about the structural conditions shaping EU geoeconomic autonomy in the emergent central bank digital currency domain? The paper examines theoretical literature on digital monetary power, regulatory power and governance model constraints to construct an ideal-type analytical framework useful for evaluating digital currency projects. The research analyzed a dataset of 43 behavioral indicators captured across qualitative and documentary sources for the 2018- 2025 time period to reveal a dominant Type III – Architectural Revisionism profile for China and a dominant Type II – Multilateral Interoperability profile for the EU. A comparative case analysis was then performed to read the two profiles together, which revealed fundamental divergences in CBDC design architecture, payment rail infrastructure and retail vs. wholesale operating domains. Given these findings and China’s first-mover 2 advantage, this paper makes three recommendations for EU policymakers. The first is to accelerate the execution of the EU’s wholesale central bank asset tokenization platform, Agorá, in order to provide an infrastructural response to China’s wholesale CBDC mBridge platform. The second is to enforce stricter regulations on Chinese banking institutions operating China’s Cross-border Interbank System payment rails on European soil. And finally, given the digital euro’s proposed design and protracted delivery timeline, the third recommendation is removing barriers for European fintechs and digital banking institutions to allow for innovation and operational scaling in order to compete with embedded US payment giants. These recommendations would help bolster EU geoeconomic autonomy and competitiveness in the global digital currency domain.
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Master of Arts in International Affairs -- John Cabot University, Spring 2026.
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2026
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Teague_Sarah_MA_Thesis_SP26.pdf
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Central banks and banking, Geopolitics, Economic security
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Teague, Sarah. "China & The EU: Central Bank Digital Currency Projects & the Pursuit of Geoeconomic Autonomy". Master's Thesis, John Cabot University, Rome, Italy. 2026.
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Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International