Year: 2026
Type: article
Abstract: Amid the ongoing wave of the digital and intelligent technological revolution, central bank digital currency has become an important vehicle to reshape the financial service system. As China's self-developed central bank digital currency, digital renminbi provides a new tool to break through the bottlenecks in the development of traditional inclusive finance. Relying on its legal tender attributes and advantages of digital technologies, digital renminbi effectively expands the reach of financial services and serves as a key measure to improve the quality and efficiency of inclusive finance. This paper systematically discusses the theoretical mechanism through which digital renminbi empowers inclusive finance, and conducts empirical tests using the panel data fixed-effects model, with the outstanding loan balance of inclusive small and micro enterprises as the explained variable. The study shows that the launch of digital renminbi pilots exerts a significant positive driving effect on regional inclusive finance development. In addition, regional economic development level, fiscal expenditure, urbanization rate and internet penetration rate all significantly promote the expansion of inclusive credit; by contrast, deepening population aging and rising inflation level generate negative restraining effects. This paper proposes to steadily expand digital renminbi pilots and promote the application of smart contracts, implement differentiated downward outreach strategies adapted to local conditions, strengthen digital infrastructure and carry out age-friendly transformation, so as to offer empirical evidence for the construction of China's inclusive finance ecosystem.
Author: Chengbo Ruan
Institution: University of International Business and Economics
Language: English
Subfield: Management Information Systems
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: hybrid
OpenAlex ID: W7223879332