The global “currency war” is still going strong after the weekend IMF meeting ended in stalemate, with China pushing back hard against US pressure to appreciate more rapidly. Yet amid all the bickering, there was one interesting development on the Chinese side.

That was not the confirmation that Zhou Xiaochuan is the most cryptic of the world’s central bankers, after the Chinese official compared the currency debate to the difference between Chinese and western medicine.

The dispute, he said, was like a contest between “pills that solve your problem overnight” and a Chinese-style treatment that involves ten or more herbs combined together and requires “maybe one month or two months”. After all, Zhou has a long history of teasing reporters with such remarks.