LONDON: Global policymakers, including those at some of Asia’s most intervention-minded central banks, are holding the line on their currency policies after China’s surprise devaluation of the yuan.

China’s central bank said Tuesday’s 1.9 percent devaluation was a one-off move. It also switched to a more market-determined benchmark for the currency’s daily trading band.

A weaker yuan makes Chinese exports cheaper and competing exports more expensive. Countries that see themselves at a competitive disadvantage might be tempted to devalue their own currencies in retaliation. But so far policymakers from South Korea, India, Indonesia and Japan see no reason for tit-for-tat trade-war policies.

“I don’t think the move would trigger a global currency war,” a Japanese policymaker said.

The devaluation is unlikely to perturb the Bank of Japan, whose money-printing program to stimulate the economy has weakened the yen by 50 percent against the dollar since 2012. Beijing’s move may reverberate more strongly in South Korea.

China is its largest trading partner, accounting for a fifth of total trade last year.

Its policymakers have been talking down the won and actively encouraging outflows from their country, and the won has weakened against the yuan this year.

“We are not overly worried about the won, but we are closely watching the market to see if there’s any excessive volatility happening,” a South Korean foreign exchange official said.

“This came as emerging-market currencies have already been depreciating against the dollar,” he said, but the yuan remained relatively stable.

Most emerging market currencies have weakened this year. Commodity-linked ones such as the Malaysian ringgit, Indonesian rupiah and South African rand are at their lowest in well over a decade against the greenback.

Already weak metals and crude oil prices lost more ground as the devaluation fanned more worries about China’s economy

“To the extent that the yuan has been devalued, what you are going to see is that it would impact on the competitiveness of South Africa’s manufactured exports to China, but we do not sell a lot of manufactured exports to China,” Lesetja Kganyago, governor of the Reserve Bank of South Africa, said.