China’s yuan is on the rise: a future challenger to the global supremacy of the dollar, or at the very least, the herald of a new multipolar currency system—or so we’re told.

A look at the data on the actual international use of the yuan, and its achingly slow development over the past decade, is a sobering experience.

Data highlighted by the Bank for International Settlements this week are the latest to cast the yuan’s global role in a pessimistic light. Relative to its size as the world’s largest trading nation, China’s currency punches far below its weight.

Total yuan foreign-exchange turnover runs to around 14 times the value of China’s imports and exports. That compares with nearly 40 times for the euro—in a bloc where much trade is done between countries that use the same currency—160 times for the Japanese yen and around 273 times for the dollar.

International Monetary Fund data produced earlier this year showed that China ranks above all other assessed countries in terms of the share of its trade invoiced in dollars. Even emerging markets such as Brazil and Indonesia record a greater diversity of currency invoicing.