Of all the countries in the world, he said, China is “the best ever” at devaluing its currency, the renminbi. That gives its companies a big — and unfair — advantage when selling its goods abroad, the argument goes.
That’s no longer quite the case. Nowadays, China faces the opposite problem: It is shoring up its currency while the rest of the world is trying to push it down.
That change speaks to an enormous shift in China’s economic fortunes and to its position in the world. Not long ago, it was still an up-and-coming country looking for ways to nurture an economic boom that was lifting millions of people out of poverty.
Today, China is a world power with ambitions to call more of the shots in world economic affairs. Beijing is no longer content to cede that role to the likes of Brussels, London, Tokyo and Washington.
With that shift in attitude comes a change in the way China thinks about its money. A decade ago, China saw its currency as merely a tool to help its factories sell goods. That meant keeping it weak.
Now, China sees the renminbi as an instrument of its growing power. If more people around the world hold renminbi in their wallets, the thinking goes, then China will have greater say in the decisions they make. Someday, Beijing hopes, the renminbi may even rival the dollar as the world’s de facto currency.
With that in mind, China has moved in recent years to make the renminbi more appealing. On Saturday, when the International Monetary Fund is set to formally add the renminbi to its basket of reserve currencies, a move that will lump it in with the dollar, the pound, the euro and the yen, it will take another step in that direction.
But in the year since the monetary fund first said it would bestow that status on the renminbi, the Chinese currency has become less attractive. Despite Mr. Trump’s contention — which, like his assertions about Japan, harks back to another era — many economists say they believe the renminbi is overvalued, not undervalued.
