Zimbabwe will encourage the use of China’s currency to pay for anything from groceries to tourist curios as president Robert Mugabe’s government turns ever more closely to Beijing to bolster its ailing economy.

After announcing that China had agreed to cancel $40m of debt due this year, Patrick Chinamasa, Zimbabwe’s finance minister, said he hoped that boosting the use of the renminbi would bolster bilateral trade between the countries.

Mr Mugabe, Zimbabwe’s veteran president, has increasingly looked to Beijing to help prop up the country’s economy in recent years. In contrast, western nations have largely treated Mr Mugabe as a pariah since the 2000s because of his regime’s forced seizure of white-owned farms and human rights abuses committed against political opponents.