The title says displacing, not replacing - the yuan carving out a zone of dominance in Asia-Pacific would, by itself, be monumental.
Economic orthodoxy asserted that an opening of the Chinese economy and FX regime necessarily precede yuan internationalisation. Observing currencies (and implicitly capital flows) moving in concert with the yuan absent those steps suggests a back-door route to internationalisation distinct from the traditional IMF/B-W path (and thus off the radars of the American and European financial centres).
Given that currencies and capital markets are in large part a confidence game, i.e. punctuated equilibria versus smooth progressions, seeing premature, and more shockingly shadow, internationalisation is profound.
'displace' and 'replace' are synonyms in this context. What you are discussing is China becoming the dominant reserve currency in East Asia, which is a separate claim than the one made by the article.
Economic orthodoxy asserted that an opening of the Chinese economy and FX regime necessarily precede yuan internationalisation. Observing currencies (and implicitly capital flows) moving in concert with the yuan absent those steps suggests a back-door route to internationalisation distinct from the traditional IMF/B-W path (and thus off the radars of the American and European financial centres).
Given that currencies and capital markets are in large part a confidence game, i.e. punctuated equilibria versus smooth progressions, seeing premature, and more shockingly shadow, internationalisation is profound.