Time & Perspective Quote by Wu Yi

A currency is never just a currency; it is sovereignty with a price tag. Wu Yi's line is engineered to sound procedural while delivering a blunt geopolitical message: China will move the yuan on its own schedule, and the schedule is a tool of statecraft. The phrasing "until the time is right" does the heavy lifting. It converts what outsiders frame as an obligation (liberalize, revalue, play by the rules) into an internal calibration problem, as if the only relevant metrics are domestic stability, employment, and social order. That vagueness is strategic. It denies critics a target date, a benchmark, even a debate on terms they control.

"Even if there is external pressure" is the tell. Wu is speaking into a specific moment when Washington and other trade partners leaned hard on Beijing over alleged currency undervaluation, trade imbalances, and the competitive edge of Chinese exports. She doesn't argue the economics; she reframes the relationship. Pressure is not persuasion here, it's interference. The subtext is both reassurance and warning: reassurance to domestic audiences that leaders won't be pushed around, warning to foreign governments that moralizing will backfire.

As a politician operating within a system that prizes face and control, Wu's intent is to protect policy flexibility while projecting resolve. The sentence is calibrated diplomacy: it offers the possibility of reform (not "never"), but removes any idea that outsiders can claim credit for it. In currency politics, that distinction is power.