Amid growing concerns over the instability of the U.S. dollar, which reached its lowest level this year so far, the United Nations and China proposed alternatives to using it as the world’s reserve currency.

The dollar’s slide has prompted investors to switch their funds to gold, which they consider a safer type of investment. This partly caused the price of gold and other precious metals to surge to record levels. Gold traded above $1,000 per ounce in early September.

“‘The dollar is going down because of inflation fears’ and that pushes gold up, said Leonard Kaplan, the president of Prospector Asset Management in Evanston, Illinois, and a bullion trader for more than three decades” (Bloomberg).

The UN’s proposal for replacing the dollar calls for creating a central bank and establishing a universal reserve currency.

The Daily Telegraph reported that Detlef Kotte, who co-authored a report presented at the UN Conference on Trade and Development, said, “Replacing the dollar with an artificial currency would solve some of the problems related to the potential of countries running large deficits and would help stability.”

Meanwhile China, emboldened by its robust reserves and buoyant economy, is positioning its own currency, the yuan (renminbi), to replace the dollar.

“When it comes to this long-term plan to boost the yuan’s importance, China is waging a campaign on multiple fronts. This past spring, for instance, China organized a meeting in Moscow—attended by representatives from Brazil, India and Russia—where the main goal was to supplant the U.S. dollar as the world’s main reserve currency, replacing it with a yuan-led market basket of currencies, one that is simply backed by China’s renminbi…” (Money Morning).