Senior fellow Arvind Subramanian was mentioned in an Economist article on the Chinese yuan.
From the article
AT THE FLAGSHIP store of Yue Hwa Chinese Products in Hong Kong customers can find exotic and everyday items from mainland China without having to cross the border. The offerings include silk brocades, sandalwood carvings, Sichuan peppers and traditional Chinese remedies such as ribbed antelope horns. Horn shavings, boiled in water, are said to quieten the liver and quell fevers.
Feverish visitors from the mainland can even pay for their shavings in their own currency, the yuan. The store charges 2,660 yuan ($416) for a whole horn, at an exchange rate of 1.1 Hong Kong dollar per yuan. Nearby money-changers offer a better rate, but some Chinese visitors prefer the convenience of using their own money. That way they can still get a late-night snack at the 7-Eleven after the money-changers have closed.
That is how, not long ago, the yuan set out on its career as an international currency. It crept into Hong Kong in the wallets of mainland visitors. The trickle across China’s borders quickened last year when the government allowed a broader range of Chinese firms to settle imports and exports in yuan. In the same year it set these offshore yuan free. Outside the mainland, the yuan could be transferred between banks, borrowed, lent and invested, just like any other currency.