[amilcarkabral]

China is on the verge of becoming the big guy on the block in an area of very big guys. Do you know that Asia holds like 2/3rd of the world's population (India, Indonesia, Pakistan, Russia and Bangladesh). So it is possible that when their economy starts integrating into most of the country, then the Yuan will become the defacto standard at least of Asia instead of the dollar and the Yen.

I doubt they'd integrate much with the Middle East. They are two different civilizations, and civilization is a gap that almost can't be hurdled. Check out the book The Clash of Civilizations by Sam Huntington. He puts in a great analysis of the tensions between core and periphery countries that looks like it analyzed the cold war well, and whose analysis makes the post-cold war world intelligible.