China took two key lessons from the great financial crisis. It realised that the US could be an unreliable economic partner, so that remaining inside the “US dollar zone” would always risk turbulence. It also understood, as a crisis-ridden US had no difficulty in selling its debt to the world, that in financial terms the possession of a global reserve currency meant never having to say you are sorry.

Thus, since its elevation to a national policy in 2009, China’s campaign to “internationalise” the renminbi was an endeavour that appealed to two of the most basic priorities of Communist party power – self-reliance and security. Subsequently, the cause has also become imbued with other objectives such as the opening of the country’s capital account and the induction of foreign money into China’s bond and equity markets.

Such a broad agglomeration of aims has made the goal of winning a global role for China’s currency revealing of Beijing’s long-term geopolitical strategy. In the words of Michael Power, strategist for Investec Asset Management, Beijing hopes to spur the “transformation of Shanghai into one of the principal fountainheads of global capital”.