China seeks to extend oil market clout with new contract: Beijing eyes bigger role for currency for renminbi-based benchmark. As everyone knows, China has been the world's biggest crude oil importer since 2017. But the most importmant global crude oil price benchmarks are based on the crude oil futures trading of WTI in the U.S., as well as Brent oil in the United Kingdom. What is worse for China, almost all oil contracts are settled in U.S. dollar, not Chinese yuan. The main purpose of this study is to clarify the present strategy of Chinese governemt authorities to not only making the Chinese Yuan-denominated Shanghai crude oil futures become Asian oil price benchmark such as WTI and Brent oil in the West, but also giving a boost to Chinese yuan as a major international currency like Dollar. The fact is the Chinese authorities have detected a potential major breakthrough to make Yuan an international currency from launching the crude oil futures trading on March 26 2018. By the way, it was also China’s first futures variety open to overseas investors. Because Shanghai crude oil futures are interactive with peer contracts exchanged on the market of European countries and the United States, as well as other major markets such as Dubai oil, arbitrage transactions between WTI, Brent and the others during the Asian trading period have turned more active since the launch of Shanghai crude oil futures. According to the Shanghai International Energy Exchange （INE）, a unit of the Shanghai Futures Exchange, for the time being, the daily trading volume reached almost 157,000 lots on average. Related businesses such as trading, settlement, currency exchange, cross-border currency transfer, and delivery in bonds have been operated, which have promoted overseas energy companies' participation in the China market. The fast increasing trading volume of Shanghai crude oil futures indicated that the contracts had been recognized by the market. Since May 2018, the summary code of Shanghai crude oil futures, Shanghai Crude（SC） has reached the world's third active crude oil futures trading markets. Oil and chemical industry giants, commodity traders and investment companies are among the active traders. Although Shanghai crude oil futures look successful, however, many issues still lurk. The most essential one is that if it wants to play a more important role in the world crude oil market such as WTI or Brent oil, far more overseas investors are necessary to join in it. With the participation of a large number of multinational oil companies, oil traders and investment banks, Shanghai crude oil futures can form a benchmark price reflecting the supply-demand situation in China and the Asia-Pacific region at large some day.