October 1, 2016 was an important day for international money (monies) and an important day in the history of the People's Republic of China. The International Monetary Fund added the Chinese yuan to a basket of currencies that it uses for its loans, known as the Special Drawing Rights currencies. The SDR list also includes the US dollar, the Japanese yen, the British pound, and the euro. That's it. Full stop. With the addition of the yuan there are bow as many SFR currencies as there are veto power countries in the UN Security Council. One confusing fact about the yuan is semantic: it seems to be used as a synonym with "renminbi." Actually, the yuan is the base unit, the renminbi is the currency, in much the same way that the "pound" is the base unit of the British "sterling." But over the last few decades, "pound" has become the most customary term in any context, and "sterling" is finding itself moving into the linguisti...
