It also has the power to restrict the influence of Alipay and WeChat Pay, owned by tech giants Ant Financial and Tencent, which the government fears have become systemic.

For now, Lipsky argues, Beijing’s priorities are largely inward-looking: “We look at the digital yuan and think, ‘What are their international ambitions when it comes to the dollar, is it displacing the dollar as a reserve currency?’ I think a lot of that is overstated.”

However, that could swiftly change. Lipsky says that over the coming years, China could seek to promote more international trade in digital yuan, and avoid financial systems such as the US-run Swift, particularly with participants in its Belt and Road initiative.

With paying via smartphones already second nature in China, the country is a natural testing ground for digital money, says Mark Perry, a professor of computer science at Brunel University. “Mobile money is absolutely embedded in people’s ordinary way of life. WeChat Pay and Alipay are massively ingrained.” Almost 800m use mobile payments in China. 

However, existing systems’ success has meant a clunky start for the digital yuan. The PBOC recently said 261m people had opened wallets, roughly a quarter of China’s population. The bank’s official app has topped download stores since being released this month.

That does not translate into usage, however. Bao Linghao of Trivium, a consultancy, points out that the number of downloads is equivalent to double the population in cities where people can actually use the virtual currency. 

One problem is that consumers see little reason to switch from WeChat and Alipay. Zou Lan, director of the PBOC’s financial markets department, said last week that in the last two years, total e-CNY transactions have totalled 87.6bn yuan (£10.3bn). Most of that is believed to have taken place in the last six months. In contrast, Alipay processed 10 trillion yuan a month during 2020. 

Both carrots and sticks are being used to change the lack of uptake. Local governments have been giving away digital yuan in an effort to encourage its use and the payment apps have been encouraged to support it. Alipay obliged last year and WeChat recently announced it would follow. On Friday, ecommerce giant Meituan said it would start accepting e-CNY. 

But the subdued Olympics has somewhat dampened excitement, says Douglas Arner of the University of Hong Kong. 

“The way that the Beijing Winter Olympics are now operating – which is effectively as a closed bubble, with almost no visitors and very few spectators – means that from the standpoint of the athletes and the small numbers of people who are travelling with them, they don’t have much opportunity to use it at all,” he says. “As a trial, it’s not very exciting.”

That will please hawkish US politicians who had called for American athletes to avoid the currency over spying fears.

But China is unlikely to be deterred – it plans to extend its city-by-city pilot of the digital yuan nationwide this year. Its international coming out party, however, looks like a disappointment before the guests have even arrived.