Depending on who you ask, China’s move to let its currency depreciate is either a milestone for market reform or a sharp escalation of a currency war waged by government planners desperate to rescue a sputtering economy. China’s central bank has done its best to support the first interpretation. In addition to pre-empting accusations of competitive devaluation, this framing strengthens the case that a more flexible renminbi deserves the International Monetary Fund’s endorsement as an official reserve currency. Critics counter that China’s appeal to market forces is opportunistic. The Communist party likes to unleash market forces when they happen to align with its policy goals, they say, but will quickly revert to daily intervention when conditions shift. Proponents of the market reform interpretation point out that China’s devaluation does not follow the usual currency war script. Unlike so-called Abenomics in Japan, for example, China’s central bank is not creating money and selling it into the market. Instead, the People’s Bank of China weakened the renminbi simply by unleashing depreciation pressure that had been building for months but that previous central bank intervention had held in check.