There is a theme park in the southern Chinese city of Shenzhen in which many of the world's most famous landmarks are recreated on a smaller scale. Visitors can stroll from the Eiffel Tower to the Pyramids, the Coliseum to the Taj Mahal, Stonehenge to Mount Fuji, Angkor Wat to the Kremlin and scores of other attractions all without leaving an area of 48 hectares. It may not be the real thing, but if offers a vision of the world in a controlled environment.

In that aspect, the park prefigures elements of China's evolving financial reforms. As it progresses, a plan unveiled earlier this year to turn Shanghai into a global financial centre by 2020 appears more concerned with bringing a controlled version of the world to Shanghai than with allowing Chinese money to engage with the real thing beyond its borders.

This may change, of course, but for now China appears to be seized more with reform than liberalisation. Indeed, its vigorous programmes to internationalise the renminbi, boost the size of its domestic futures markets and expand the Shanghai Stock Exchange are animated more by a desire to project power than to integrate China with the global financial system. Control is still the watchword.

Consider the first steps to turn Shanghai into a “global” financial centre. It looks increasingly likely that an “international board” may be launched on the SSE next year, providing a platform for some of the world's most famous companies to list. So far, such icons of the capitalist world as the UK's HSBC, America's GE, Brazil's Vale, and NYSE Euronext, the parent company of the New York Stock Exchange, hope to issue shares to the Chinese public in renminbi. Several more are expected to follow. In a few years' time, Chinese investors may be able to pick and choose among many of the world's top companies without ever leaving the comfort of the renminbi.

Reinforcing this sense of C2C (copying to China) is another plan to launch global exchange traded funds, products that will allow investors to buy a collection of overseas stocks and bonds denominated in renminbi. Even the recent launch of the ChiNext, an enterprise board for smaller Chinese companies, could be seen as part of the “locally global” trend. Before ChiNext, many smaller Chinese companies opted to list on Nasdaq, Hong Kong's Gem or London's Aim. Now the outward flow could slow.

In commodity futures trade too, signs of a controlling urge are clear. Policymakers make no secret of their desire to see China's pricing power for global energy, metal and farm commodities enhanced, partly by boosting the breadth and depth of three burgeoning commodity exchanges. Each of these is leaping up the world rankings in terms of traded volume, with the Dalian Commodity Exchange, the Zhengzhou Commodity Exchange and the Shanghai Futures Exchange all set to be placed among the top 10 or thereabouts this year, following volume increases in the first nine months of the year of 60 per cent, 67 per cent and 253 per cent respectively.

In a nutshell, the hope of China's policymakers is that once the volumes of contracts traded on its domestic exchanges climb near to – or even exceed – those recorded on the Chicago Board of Trade, the London Metal Exchange and New York Mercantile Exchange, then the world will start to take its pricing cues from Chinese exchanges. This, as Beijing sees it, will not only reflect the natural order of things (China is the biggest buyer of almost all physical commodities), it will also reduce price volatility – allowing Chinese companies to buy what they need more cheaply.