De-dollarization isn’t a financial glitch—it’s a global revolt against empire’s economic leash. From Malaysia to China, the Global South is building the scaffolding of sovereignty while Wall Street watches its power bleed out.
By Prince Kapone | Weaponized Information | June 12, 2025
I. The Dollar’s Funeral and the Media’s Panic
On June 11, 2025, CNBC published a piece headlined “De-dollarization in Asia is picking up speed.” The article, framed with the gloss of neutral financial reportage, chronicles a growing movement among Asian economies to shift reserves away from the U.S. dollar toward regional alternatives like China’s yuan and Malaysia’s ringgit. But behind the numerical veneer and economist quotes lies a subtle but unmistakable panic—a panic not over economic disruption, but over the slow unraveling of U.S. imperial power and the financial levers that prop it up.
The article is penned by Lee Ying Shan, a Singapore-based CNBC reporter whose bylines orbit the gravitational pull of Western financial orthodoxy. Her reporting track record reads like a Bloomberg internship on autopilot: stock markets, Fed briefings, and investor forecasts delivered with textbook efficiency. Employed by a platform wholly owned by NBCUniversal—a Comcast subsidiary—Lee operates within an ideological infrastructure that exists not to inform the public, but to soothe investors. CNBC is no exception; it’s a product of and for Wall Street, embedded in the interests of a global financial class deeply invested in the dollar’s continued supremacy.
Throughout the piece, institutional voices like Vishnu Varathan (Mizuho Bank) and other finance-sector consultants frame the conversation. These figures, whose analysis guides capital flows and informs elite strategy, view dedollarization not as democratic recalibration but as market disruption. Their concern is not for the sovereignty of Malaysia or the development needs of Laos—it’s for the stability of U.S.-aligned portfolios.
So let’s dissect the narrative techniques at work. First, there’s the classic euphemism. CNBC calls dedollarization a “risk” to “financial stability,” masking it as a technical malfunction rather than what it is: a geopolitical pushback against financial domination. Framing it as “volatility” conceals the structural violence of the dollar system itself—the instability was always built in, just not for the empire’s benefit.
Second, the article leans into Cold War thinking—portraying the shift in currency use as bloc-based rivalry between “Asia” and “the empire,” implicitly situating U.S. dollar dominance as the natural order. But it was the U.S. that detonated trust in the dollar by freezing Russian central bank assets in 2022, weaponizing global reserves and forcing the world to seek alternatives.
Third, there’s the illusion of irrelevance. While ASEAN countries are expanding local currency settlements, the article minimizes the shift as “limited” or “symbolic.” Yet data shows BRICS+ and ASEAN are actively creating cross-border mechanisms to reduce dollar dependence—not in the future, but now. The shift may be slow, but it is strategic and irreversible.
Fourth, the piece omits the empire’s financial architecture entirely. There’s no mention of SWIFT, no acknowledgment of IMF dependency, and no accounting for the $10.8 trillion drained annually from the Global South through unequal exchange. The historical context that sustains dollar privilege—colonial plunder rebranded as “stability”—is scrubbed from view.
Finally, we get the soft Orientalism—portraying Asia as reactive, fragmented, or opportunistic. The dedollarization movement is treated as technical tinkering, not ideological rupture. But these moves—by Malaysia, China, Indonesia, and others—are part of a growing consensus: the dollar is no longer a neutral store of value. It is a weapon. And nations are disarming it.
To be clear, the dollar still comprises roughly 58% of global reserves and over half of international trade invoices. But it’s the trajectory that matters. The decline is slow, but the structural shift is undeniable. Empire may still own the bank vault, but it’s already lost the trust. What CNBC gives us is not analysis—it’s a funeral sermon written in denial, draped in euphemism, and financed by the very system that’s crumbling.
II. Beneath the Ticker: What the Article Didn’t Say
Beneath CNBC’s carefully arranged language lies a set of material facts that deserve extraction. Yes, it is true: several Asian nations are reducing their dollar reserves. The article notes regional movement toward local-currency settlements and shifting trade norms. Malaysia has expanded yuan-denominated trade with China, and ASEAN has formalized a new 2026–2030 strategic plan to reduce dollar exposure and increase local-currency use. These developments are not symbolic—they are infrastructural.
But what CNBC omits is more important than what it reports. There is no mention of the United States’ ongoing weaponization of the dollar through financial sanctions, reserve freezes, and the coercive use of the SWIFT network. After the U.S. froze Russia’s central bank assets in 2022, a chilling signal was sent: your money is only yours if Washington allows it. Since then, currency diversification has accelerated across Asia, driven by the need for autonomy, not ideology.
Also absent is the scale and coordination of dedollarization efforts. BRICS+ nations are actively building alternative payment rails, including China’s Cross-Border Interbank Payment System (CIPS), to bypass SWIFT and settle trade in national currencies. These aren’t symbolic experiments—they’re state-backed counter-systems, now joined by more than 50 countries. ASEAN+3 economies have also signed currency swap agreements aimed at shielding the region from dollar-induced volatility.
To be sure, dedollarization is uneven. The dollar still makes up nearly 58% of global reserves and about half of trade invoices, and Barclays has called the shift “ongoing, but slow.” But to reduce this process to mere symbolism is to miss the deeper contradiction: the underlying trust that held up the dollar system has ruptured. The U.S. Treasury market may still be the most liquid, but liquidity doesn’t matter when you’re locked out. Sanctions, seizures, and unpredictable policy swings—especially under figures like Trump—have made holding dollars a geopolitical liability.
This is where CNBC’s analysis collapses entirely: it refuses to acknowledge that dedollarization is a political reaction to imperial finance. The dollar’s dominance was never about merit—it was imposed through Bretton Woods, the petrodollar system, and the structural adjustment programs that gutted the Global South. Dollar-denominated debt became a trap, enforced by military bases and multilateral “development” loans. That architecture is now cracking.
What the article frames as a technical hedge is, in fact, a political insurgency. When Japanese insurers raise hedge ratios to 48% or Taiwan reaches 61.5%, these are not isolated adjustments. They are coordinated withdrawals from a weaponized monetary order. They are survival strategies—but they’re also acts of anti-imperialist sovereignty.
Still, we must be precise: dedollarization alone does not equal liberation. Without redistributive measures—debt cancellation, public banking, democratic economic planning—the exit from the dollar risks becoming a revolving door. In some cases, like Thailand or Taiwan, dedollarization has created financial pressures that harm ordinary people, while benefitting central banks and financial elites. This is why the shift must be connected to a broader revolutionary agenda—one that links monetary independence to material justice.
And this trend is not confined to Asia. Across Latin America, Africa, and parts of Europe, the dollar’s centrality is no longer assumed. Sovereign digital currencies, barter systems, and local credit mechanisms are emerging. The real story is not the decline of the dollar alone—it’s the slow birth of a world economy no longer tethered to Washington’s terms. What CNBC calls fragmentation is, in truth, reorganization—a reassertion of planetary dignity through financial rupture.
III. The Empire Calls It Instability—We Call It Liberation
Let’s call it what it is: de-dollarization is not “risk.” It is resistance. It is not a threat to “global stability”—it is a threat to imperial stability, which is another way of saying instability for everyone else. What the CNBC article dresses up in economic euphemism is, at its core, a global uprising against the financial architecture of empire.
To the U.S. and its dollar-dealing allies, money has always been more than exchange. It’s a leash. A disciplinary mechanism. A permission slip for development, to be revoked the moment a nation steps out of line. Dollar hegemony was never about liquidity or “trust.” It was about control. That’s why when nations from Asia to Africa begin using their own currencies to settle trade, it’s not a financial transaction—it’s a declaration of independence.
In CNBC’s framing, countries like Malaysia and China are merely “hedging,” “diversifying,” or “managing exposure.” But this language conceals the deliberate nature of these policies. These nations are not fumbling in the dark—they are constructing counter-systems to U.S. monetary control. From currency swaps to reserve reallocation, these are strategic ruptures, not market flukes.
What the West derides as “fragmentation” is, in fact, the slow formation of dual and contending power within the global financial system. The SWIFT network may still dominate, but BRICS members are actively deploying alternative rails such as CIPS, Russia’s SPFS, and the emerging BRICS Pay. These infrastructures are no longer theoretical—they are operating in real time.
The material drivers of this moment must be named clearly. This isn’t just diversification—it’s defense. It’s the inevitable result of what we’ve identified as hyper‑imperialism: a stage of global capitalist decay in which the empire maintains power not through production or diplomacy, but through coercion—financial strangulation, reserve seizures, information warfare. As detailed by the Tricontinental Institute, hyper‑imperialism uses “lawfare, hyper‑sanctions, seizure of national reserves” to suppress noncompliant regimes. Read their full analysis here.
And yet, a sober truth remains: de-dollarization is not inherently revolutionary. The same elites who profit from imperial finance can just as easily profit from regional currency blocs or digital settlement systems. A yuan-dominated world is not guaranteed to be any more just than a dollar-dominated one—unless it is reclaimed by the people. This is why we must distinguish between monetary sovereignty and economic liberation.
If currency realignment isn’t tied to redistributive policies—public ownership, debt abolition, ecological repair—it risks becoming a new game with the same rigged rules. The technocrats may change languages and denominations, but if capital continues to flow upward and austerity still flows down, then the leash has only changed color.
Still, we mark this moment for what it is: a global reckoning. The dollar’s decline is not a financial anomaly—it is a signal. A signal that empire’s financial leash is fraying, that its economic command over the Global South is losing legitimacy, and that the scaffolding of a multipolar order is being built beneath its feet. That’s not instability. That’s freedom beginning to speak in its own currency.
IV. From Reserve Currencies to Revolutionary Currents
This moment demands more than analysis—it demands alignment. We declare our ideological unity with the nations and peoples of the Global South who are breaking from dollar dependency. Their shift toward currency sovereignty is not merely a policy correction—it is an opening salvo in a broader confrontation with the decaying order of U.S.-led hyper-imperialism. Every bilateral swap agreement, every local-currency trade settlement, every hedge against dollar exposure is a brick removed from the foundation of empire.
Across Asia, these shifts are not isolated. They are structural. The ASEAN 2026–2030 Economic Community Strategic Plan aims to deepen financial integration and reduce dollar reliance. BRICS+ nations are building alternative financial systems—CIPS, SPFS, and BRICS Pay—that offer infrastructure, not just symbolism. In Japan, Taiwan, and Malaysia, insurers and central banks are shifting portfolios away from dollar assets to protect against volatility—and more importantly, against U.S. weaponization of its currency.
But the future of these efforts hinges on whether they remain elite-managed or are seized as vehicles for people’s liberation. Monetary sovereignty must not stop at central banks. If it does, the tools of empire will simply be handed to a new class of domestic capitalists, who will administer the same austerity and inequality under a different banner. That’s why the next phase of the struggle must include:
- Mass political education on how the dollar system functions as an imperial weapon—and why sovereignty means owning the conditions of exchange, not just the units.
- Solidarity campaigns supporting South-South economic integration and debt resistance, including popular pressure for reparations and asset recovery.
- Local financial autonomy: mutual credit systems, worker-owned financial cooperatives, and community currencies that operate outside the imperial financial pipeline.
- Revolutionary demands: debt abolition, land redistribution, nationalization of strategic sectors, and democratized control of central banks and currency policy.
- Digital insurgency: tools of Proletarian Cyber Resistance must be deployed to defend and expand alternative payment infrastructures—open-source, decentralized, and immune to imperial sabotage.
None of this is utopian. It is already happening. In Bolivia—where shortages of dollars have driven the state energy firm to use cryptocurrency for fuel imports—currency and payment innovation are being deployed in a crisis born of imperial scarcity. Reuters confirms this use of digital assets during hard-currency shortages. Across Africa, the African Export-Import Bank and the AU have launched the Pan-African Payment and Settlement System (PAPSS), already operational and boosting intra-African trade efficiency.
We are living in a moment of fracture—and a moment of potential. The imperial currency may still dominate, but it no longer dictates. If we seize this opening, link it to revolutionary practice, and root it in the demands of the colonized and the poor, then the fall of the dollar will be more than a technical adjustment. It will be a funeral for the financial engine of empire—and a sunrise for the world we must build in its place.
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