Inclusion in the IMF's special-drawing-rights basket

China has been all over the news with August's currency devaluation and the Shanghai Composite'sdramatic moves.

Since then, investors and companies have been concerned about what exactly China means for growth prospects. Some have even attributed their weaker third-quarter numbers to it.

But there's another, largely overlooked thing financiers should keep an eye on:

China wants to get its renminbi into the International Monetary Fund's reserve-assets classification known as the special drawing rights, or the SDR. And its inclusion or exclusion could have major ramifications in the global markets.

On Wednesday, Lombard Street Research hosted a conference partially dedicated to analyzing the impact of China's liberalization on financial markets. Several speakers specifically mentioned China's desire for the yuan's inclusion in the SDR as a key thing to watch.

Though inclusion in the basket may not immediately strike investors and casual onlookers as that important, that's definitely not how China sees the situation, according to Diana Choyleva, Lombard Street Research's chief economist and head of research.

"The IMF is about to decide whether to include the yuan in its SDR basket," she said at the event. "As far as I'm concerned, if the yuan is accepted, and the omens are good now, this will mark the start of China's full integration into global financial markets."

Reuters/Jason LeeChinese President Xi Jinping.

Choyleva went on to delineate what exactly the inclusion or exclusion of the renminbi would mean for the markets.

"If the yuan goes in the basket, then the likelihood is that the Chinese would prefer a gradual depreciation of their currency against the US dollar," she said. "And this is good news because it allows time for the real income gains in the West to be spent and potentially for us to get into the positive scenario."

But if the yuan is not allowed in the SDR, Choyleva said:

"The Chinese leadership is not going to wait another five years for the West to deign to accept them. And they will not be so keen to be such a responsible global citizen. Because out of the major economies, the only currency that's seriously overvalued is the yuan, and that's the only one that hasn't engaged in any major effective devaluation. [...] If the yuan is not accepted in the SDR, they will go for a one-off large devaluation and that would then be ... a financial crisis, specifically, a real-economy crisis with the resulting impact on the ... markets."

This may seem sort of intense for a membership that doesn't even seem important to Western investors. For China, however, getting the renminbi into a currency basket made up of the US dollar, the euro, the Japanese yen, and the British pound could indicate recognition of the currency's global politicalimportance.