That's not what the article says, it only really addresses recent events. The main reason goods manufactured in China have historically been cheap is that Chinese labour and land is very inexpensive in absolute terms. They had huge amounts of land that was under-utilised and hundreds of millions of rural people with little or no economically valuable work to do, with very low standards of living. That's the basic source of China's manufacturing cost advantage.
It's also not true that China has consistently devalued their currency, they have frequently acted to prop up it's value especially since the financial crisis. Before 2007 the Yuan was much weaker, at over 8 to the dollar. The recent slide in the Yuan was a result of the latest tariffs. China didn't act to devalue it, they simply stopped acting to prop it up.
So overall yes, a relatively weak yuan has served China well, but much of that weakness is due to structural economic reasons. Labour and land was cheap due to low labour and land utilisation. Labour was also cheap due to very minimal standards of living. Manufacturing capacity was cheap due to enormous economies of scale. Those aren't a recipe leading to a naturally strong currency.