HONG KONG — China on Thursday sought to ease the turbulence its depreciating currency, the renminbi, has set off in global markets, even as it pushed the renminbi lower for the third day in a row.

China’s central bank, the People’s Bank of China, set the renminbi’s official exchange rate to the dollar lower by 1.1 percent on Thursday, bringing the total devaluation since Tuesday to 4.4 percent, the biggest drop in decades.

The renminbi is falling because the government is loosening its tight grip on the currency, but only by a bit.

China’s slowing economy has created pressure on the renminbi to weaken for more than a year, but instead the government held to its longstanding practice and kept it closely linked to the dollar, which has risen as the United States economy rebounded.

By devaluing the renminbi now, China has delivered a boost to its exporters, whose goods become relatively cheaper for overseas buyers. But the sharp and sudden fall has also raised concerns that the economy is weaker than the official growth rate suggests and prompted questions over the Chinese leadership’s management of the slowdown.

At an unusual ad hoc news conference on Thursday, officials from the central bank were at pains to explain that the currency had not entered a free fall.

“The central bank has withdrawn from the normal mode of intervention,” Yi Gang, the deputy governor of the bank and the head of the unit that runs China’s foreign exchange system, told reporters in Beijing. “But if you say the market has commonly recognized rules of the game, then those are still the rules that we lay out.”

Mr. Yi was referring to changes to China’s currency system that were announced on Tuesday, as the bank devalued the renminbi by nearly 2 percent. It was the biggest daily drop since 1994, when China’s modern currency system began.

Previously, the central bank would assign a value to the currency each morning, and would allow it to trade up or down by a maximum of 2 percent against the dollar. In practice, it barely budged more than a fraction of percentage point each day.

Now, policy makers have said they are giving the market a bigger say by basing the setting of the official exchange rate on the currency’s trading performance, not just on a government decree.

Still, central bank officials made clear on Thursday that while they intended to ease their grip somewhat, they would not end it.

On Wednesday, when the renminbi showed signs of weakening by the maximum 2 percent limit, the central bank was widely reported to have jumped into the currency market, selling dollars to push up the value of the renminbi — which rapidly recovered to close only 1 percent lower.

“They intervened massively and drove the exchange rate up,” said Arthur Kroeber, the managing director of Gavekal Dragonomics, a financial consultancy. Still, he added that the new system “is clearly on the spectrum of a much more market-exchange-rate environment.”

On Thursday, trading was more subdued, though heavy trading volume returned again in the final minutes of activity. The renminbi weakened only very slightly, by 0.2 percent. This suggested that, based on the new system, the central bank would not be under pressure to make another drastic shift in the renminbi’s value when it sets the official exchange rate on Friday.

Stock markets across the region recovered modestly on Thursday after the recent sell-off, led by Shanghai, where the main index finished 1.8 percent higher after two days of declines. Other currency markets outside China also stabilized, led by the South Korean won, which rose against the dollar in late Asian trading.

Mr. Yi did not directly comment on any intervention when asked about it on Thursday, but hinted it was a tool still at the central bank’s disposal. “When there’s excessive volatility in the market, it can still be effectively managed,” he said.