Exhibit A: China sets up currency swaps with six nations so far this year. Exhibit B: earlier this month the State Council announces plans to allow companies in five cities to settle cross-border trade deals in renminbi. Exhibit C: Hong Kong chief executive Donald Tsang says this week that Beijing will support the issuance of renminbi-denominated bonds in the city in various ways.

Commentators have seized on such developments as evidence of a new Chinese determination to internationalise the renminbi, following the central bank governor's mischievous remarks about finding an alternative to the dollar as the default reserve currency.

But enthusiasts for a new world order should take a step back. The glacial pace of the relaxation of capital controls over the past 30 years is unlikely to be changed on the current premier's watch. This has been a crisis of globalisation, after all, with those economies most open to the unfettered movement of capital among the hardest hit.