Kuala Lumpur hosted the first-ever Association of Southeast Asian Nations–Gulf Cooperation Council–China Summit during the week of May 25, 2025. The summit brought together Southeast Asian, Gulf, and Chinese leaders in a significant display of regional realignment. While trade and energy cooperation dominated official statements, a major outcome was the coordinated effort to reduce reliance on the United States dollar in cross-border transactions.

Just days before the summit, the central banks of Indonesia and China signed a Memorandum of Understanding to conduct bilateral trade using their national currencies—the Indonesian rupiah and the Chinese renminbi. According to Bank Indonesia, this agreement covers roughly 150 billion United States dollars’ worth of trade annually.

China has now signed currency swap agreements with more than 30 countries and operates the Cross-Border Interbank Payment System, which processed 123.7 trillion yuan, or approximately 17.5 trillion United States dollars, in 2024, based on figures from the People’s Bank of China.

The Association of Southeast Asian Nations and China recently upgraded their Free Trade Agreement to include digital trade, renewable energy cooperation, and rules-of-origin harmonisation. In 2024, trade between the Association of Southeast Asian Nations and China reached 975 billion United States dollars, according to China’s Ministry of Commerce.

The Gulf states are also moving to diversify currency use. In March 2024, the Shanghai Petroleum and Natural Gas Exchange reported the first-ever liquefied natural gas sale between China and the United Arab Emirates settled in Chinese renminbi. Saudi Arabia’s state oil company, Aramco, has signed agreements to explore pricing oil in renminbi and to expand investments in China’s energy sector.

Indonesia’s renewed focus on monetary sovereignty stems in part from the 1997 Asian Financial Crisis, during which it experienced a major outflow of United States dollars, forcing reliance on International Monetary Fund assistance and exposing vulnerabilities in foreign currency dependence.

United States President Donald Trump, speaking at a campaign event in May 2025, warned that countries moving away from the dollar “threaten American power” and proposed “tariffs on BRICS nations” as a countermeasure. As of 2025, the BRICS group—Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa—accounts for over 32 percent of global GDP (based on purchasing power parity) and more than 40 percent of the world’s population, according to the International Monetary Fund.