His remarks were made at a special meeting, named “Nanjing II,” held in France, March 31. A similar conference was held in Nanjing on the same date in 2011.

German Finance Minister Wolfgang Schaeuble and U.K. Chancellor of the Exchequer George Osborne, together with IMF Managing Director Christine Lagarde discussed the world’s financial architecture together with China, without any senior US official present. According to Bloomberg the event gave China an opportunity to argue ‘the global monetary system is too reliant on the dollar’, an idea China has been pushing since the 2008 global financial crisis.

Bloomberg reported: