There you go, Washington. US politicians, in an election year, may claim that Monday’s relaxing of the renminbi’s trading band is all about their calls for Chinese currency appreciation. It isn’t really. The move is rather another step in China’s gradual, and so far well-managed, currency liberalisation. The important point is what comes next in the process.

The wider band – 1 per cent either side of a daily fixed rate, double the previous limit – should increase two-way trading, if gradually: the official onshore renminbi weakened on Monday, but did not stray from its old range. Liberalisation is of course relative here: China’s central bank still fixes the midpoint and intervenes daily. On at least 10 occasions towards the end of last year, for example, the renminbi fell substantially but the central bank simply fixed the midpoint the next day at a rate stronger than the 0.5 per cent that would have been allowed during trading, according to Capital Economics.

So what next? More liberalisation, hopefully, although China’s stop-start record means each step is probably, but not definitively, a portent. Still the changes are mounting; this latest follows a near-tripling in foreigners’ investment quotas earlier this month. Moves to watch for would include allowing foreigners into China's nascent bond markets and lifting quotas further. Liberalisation must also be two-way, perhaps raising limits on domestic citizens’ foreign exchange quotas and allowing them to invest overseas. Getting the currency markets to bear some of the fluctuations in flows by widening the potential trading range is a sensible precursor. Since China introduced the crawling peg in 2005 the renminbi has risen 30 per cent against the dollar – itself down 10 per cent on a trade-weighted basis. That will not stop the politicking. But China’s liberalisation is more about its own aims – opening up, if gradually – than anything coming out of the international talking shops. Investors should prepare for more of the same.