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The dollar shortage in the market amid the COVID-19 crisis has sent a dire signal for the world's emerging currencies, including the Chinese yuan, strengthening the dollar's international status. China in turn needs to strengthen the yuan and make it an internationally accepted and traded currency, according to a Chinese expert.

"The relative dollar shortage at the beginning of the COVID-19 outbreak is a dire signal for [the yuan], because the shortage has strengthened the dollar's international status," said Li Yang, director of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences' National Institution for Finance and Development, in a recent media interview.

As the pandemic began to rage across the world at the beginning of March, a dollar shortage arose. To deal with the situation, the Bank of Canada, the Bank of England, the Bank of Japan, the European Central Bank, the US Federal Reserve and the Swiss National Bank on March 15 announced a coordinated action to enhance the provision of liquidity via a dollar liquidity swap arrangement scheme.

The crisis reconnected those economies due to rising market demand for the greenback, but China's central bank was excluded from the scheme. That could be perilous, said Li.

"In the international financial sector, a Western alliance to exclude Chinese yuan is forming. Faced with this situation, there is no solution but to strengthen the yuan and make it an international currency," Li added.