ABSTRACT Against the backdrop of profound global economic restructuring and the growing diversification of the international monetary system, exploring the role of trade channels in promoting RMB internationalisation holds significant theoretical and practical importance. This paper examines how expanding imports affects the international influence of the RMB and explores the underlying mechanisms. Using a network topology approach and a high‐dimensional time‐varying parameter vector autoregression (HD‐TVP‐VAR) model, we measure the RMB's international influence and analyse the impact of import scale on it. The results show that expanding imports significantly enhances the RMB's influence in relevant regions, with the strongest effects observed in resource‐intensive and capital‐intensive industries. Mechanism analysis reveals that import expansion strengthens the RMB's international influence through channels such as boosting market confidence, improving bargaining power, and enhancing supply chain stability. Furthermore, the paper finds that the continued expansion of RMB internationalisation exerts a ‘double‐edged’ effect on China's domestic systemic financial risk, while simultaneously mitigating global systemic financial risk and enhancing macroeconomic resilience of other economies.
Wang et al. (2026) studied this question.