This is getting politicized a ton with the ongoing "trade war" issue. I'm not writing off the fact that trade wars are a problem, and I wouldn't write off that they could have some effect on how the currency reacts. But the deval of the Yuan is unlikely to be a trade war retaliatory measure. This is worse - this is the uncontrolled devaluation of the Yuan due to China's dollar funding problems. This all ties back into their massive debt load, but also into Eurodollar markets as Jeffrey Snyder has written about extensively at alhambrapartners.com/commentaryanalysis/
Take note of the timing of things. If the Yuan devaluing was a retaliatory measure, why did it so coincidentally line up with the date in which the USDHKD peg was hit? This date also lines up with big drops in gold, copper, and tons of other EM currencies. Oh, it also is the day the dollar started appreciating again. This is all a signal that the dollar short being kept in place by China hit its limits (in my opinion). This resulted in a global collateral call, and restarted the rising dollar trend which China was so desperate to stop in 2015/2016.
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For a full understanding of things - read the article below.