China’s foreign exchange reserve saw an uptick in February for the first time in the past eight months, according to data from China's State Administration of Foreign Exchange (SAFE) . The rise in forex reserves, as a result of increasing trade activities, signals a higher chance that China will make efforts to bolster renminbi internationalization again.

“You can see from the recent movement around the US$3 trillion mark that the regulators are changing their mindset. They are no longer willing to make significant forex interventions in the market,” says Zhou Hao, director and senior emerging markets economist, Commerzbank.

The work report of the National People's Congress says that China will stick to its renminbi reform and keep the currency stable. Chinese analysts say this signals that China will prevent the renminbi from depreciating too much. It is expected that China will boost renminbi internationalization once the value of the currency becomes stable. In addition, China will also make efforts to control the fluctuation of the exchange rate to within a certain range.

China’s onshore bond market has been actively boosting renminbi internationalization. Following Bloomberg’s announcement to include China’s bond market on its major index, Citi also recently announced that it would include Chinese onshore bonds in its emerging markets and regional government bond indices.

“ETF vendors will likely soon launch onshore renminbi bond ETFs,” says Ken Hu, chief investment officer, fixed income, Asia Pacific at Invesco.

A report from Swift shows that the renminbi kept its position as the sixth most active currency for international payments with a share of 1.68% in January 2017. From December 2016 to January 2017, renminbi payments decreased by 2.83%, whilst in general all payments currencies decreased by 2.55%.