As China allows more market influence to determine the value of the RMB, the exchange rate will become more volatile. Allowing the market to determine the value of the yuan is precisely what the West has long sought, and it will serve global interests, whether China’s currency rises or falls.

China has entered into a crucial period of comprehensive deepening of reform. Reform carried out in some areas has already addressed quite a few chronic problems. Other major reform initiatives are under deliberation as well.

Tectonic shifts are occurring in the economy, financial markets, geopolitical strategy, and social policy. The ultimate test may well lie in managing the exceedingly complex interplay among these developments. Is China’s leadership up to the task, or has it bitten off too much at once?

As the Fed is paving way for the first rate hike in a decade, the world economy prepares for the greatest shift of capital flows in five years. Recent market turmoil in the U.S. and China heralds the transition.

Although One Belt, One Road is hailed as one of the grandest flagship projects of Beijing, it may have a bumpy start in Central Asia. Corruption scandals may overshadow laudable development achievements, whilst the new Silk Road may emerge as the Golden Road for kleptocratic governments and rent-seeking elites.

The Chinese-backed Pacific Refinery, the largest project in Ecuador’s history, sheds light on Ecuador’s current trading relationships with the United States and China, and a region transforming with China’s loans and construction.

Shrill forebodings of a return to ‘currency wars’ and irremediable U.S.-China trade quarrels are overblown – although the prognosis on this front is somewhat mixed. A small step backwards (the yuan devaluation on August 11th) might yet come to reflect the biggest leap forward in Asian economic, trade and financial regionalism in the years and decade ahead.

The 1.8% devaluation of the yuan has started a debate in China-watching circles about whether or not the People’s Bank of China is trying to make the RMB more market-determined, or trying to make boost its exports. Most likely, Beijing is allowing the RMB to find its feet before the IMF review in November.

Although the degree of depreciation could be determined by how the Chinese government weighs the advantages and disadvantages of RMB exchange-rate movement, market forces play a more important role, and investors must pay close attention to this.

Far from competing with US interests, the two meetings offer blueprints for more and better cooperation with Washington in a new world order.