On October 19, 2023, Dr. Peter Knaack, Adjunct Professor at American University (U.S.) and Research Fellow at the Global Economic Governance Programme, University of Oxford, was invited by the Peking University Center for American Studies and the Center for International Political Economy to deliver a lecture at the School of International Studies. His talk, titled “Dollar Hegemony, RMB Internationalization, and Global System Reform,” was chaired by Prof. Wang Yong, Director of the Center for American Studies, and attended by more than 60 faculty members and students from within and beyond the university.

In his lecture, Dr. Knaack provided a clear and accessible overview of the historical evolution and current state of the international monetary system. He focused on issues such as the failure of transatlantic coordination in derivatives regulation, the political economy of global banking supervision, China’s role in global financial governance, and the increasingly tense relationship between nation-states and intergovernmental networks in managing cross-border economic activities. He also situated these issues within their broader academic context.

During the Q&A session, Dr. Knaack engaged actively with the audience in Chinese, English, and Spanish. He shared insights on frontier topics in international monetary governance, including de-dollarization, currency unions, digital finance, the European sovereign debt crisis, and the “Triffin dilemma.” His discussion offered multiple perspectives on dollar hegemony, RMB internationalization, and reform of the international monetary system.

Following the presentation, Prof. Wang Yong delivered concluding remarks, praising Dr. Knaack’s rich life and academic background, solid scholarly foundation, and nuanced policy observations, and expressed gratitude for his thought-provoking lecture.

Dr. Knaack was born in Germany and holds a BA in Literature and an MA in Communication from Leipzig University, an MA in Diplomacy from the Latin American School of Social Sciences (Argentina), an MA in Economics and a PhD in International Relations from the University of Southern California. He has previously conducted research visits at Fudan University and Peking University. Fluent in German, French, Spanish, Portuguese, and Mandarin Chinese, his research focuses on the international political economy of finance, particularly financial inclusion, green digital finance, technology and regulation, with a regional emphasis on the political economy of China’s financial development.

Contributed by: American Studies Center 
Written and photographed by: Tang Gula