David referenced that this might turn out to be pretty significant as reserve managers are currently desperate to diversify their holdings out of euro and dollar.

But there's another important factor to consider too. China is not a benevolent agent which just does things for the sake of pleasing other people. If it chooses to act you can bet your bottom yuan that it's because it suits its own interests to do so.

But it’s not so bad, Societe Generale’s Wei Yao says. Yao looked through the details of the State Administration of Foreign Exchange data from Q2 and reckons most of it can be explained by fairly normal changes associated with the authorities’ tentative steps towards renminbi internationalisation: namely, an increase in private foreign currency deposits (as opposed to the official reserves), and credits to foreigners on domestic banks’ balance sheets.

Of course this is only a change in the direction of flows — and a small one when viewed in context. The chart below from Chinascope Financial demonstrates how, while the trend has been negative since September 2010 and particularly since September 2011, the banks’ overall forex position hasn’t changed that much in the past year:

China’s financial system stability is increasingly intertwined with its shadow banking system — which is big, according to various tallies. Bank of America Merrill Lynch says it accounts for a quarter of all bank loans, with the biggest segments being wealth management products or WMPs (8 per cent) and trust companies (8.9 per cent). Fitch Ratings says that WMPs now account for about 16 per cent of all commercial bank deposits; KPMG says trust companies will overtake insurance to become the second-biggest component of the financial sector.

A very brief recap on the Chinese foreign reserves-domestic liquidity nexus:

This, of course, is an ironic turn of events, given that China stopped being an outright currency manipulator a while ago.

China cut interest rates for the first time since 2008, stepping up efforts to combat a deepening economic slowdown as Europe’s worsening debt crisis threatens global growth. The one-year deposit rate will drop to 3.25 percent from 3.5 percent effective tomorrow, the People’s Bank of China said on its website today. The one-year lending rate will fall to 6.31 percent from 6.56 percent. Banks can offer a 20 percent discount to the benchmark lending rate, the PBOC said, widening from a previous 10 percent.

We also think global markets may be under appreciating the problem.

But does it need to be this way? Or is it indeed possible to have two, or even several such currencies? Or to get straight to the heart of it: can the euro or Chinese yuan ever have the status of the US dollar?