Currency of China, Chinese Money

A Overview of Today's Chinese Currency

(If you come from the previous page Currency in China, you can skip this overview to see the fifth version (also the current version) of China currency below.)

The present Chinese currency is called Yuan. The sign is ￥, as shown in the picture at left. Its code is CNY.

Chinese people called it Reminbi (or Ren Min Bi, RMB), meaning "people's currency."

There are three basic measuring units for Chinese currency, the first one and also the primary one is Yuan (or Kuai as many called it), which is equivalent to the measuring units like the dollar and pound.

The other two are Jiao and Fen, which function like the dime and cent in American currency.

Jiao is also referred to as Mao by many Chinese. For the sentence "I spent two Jiao for this bag," they may just say, "I spent two Mao for this bag." We wonder if this has to do with the first Chairman of P. R. China, Mao Zedong (Mao Tse-Tung), whose picture is present on Chinese money.

Here are the currency values and conversion formulas for the three China money units:

10 fen = 1 jiao

10 jiao = 1 yuan

100 fen = 1 yuan

For example: 8.88 yuan = 8 yuan 8 jiao 8 fen (or 8 kuai 8 mao 8 fen).

It's good to familiarize yourself with Chinese money.

(You may be aware why we used 8 in this example. Yes, eight is one of the Chinese lucky numbers. We wish you good luck in China!)

For online currency exchange converter, go here.

For China or other foreign currency rates, go here.

Currency of China: the Looks of Chinese Money Part 5

There are five versions of Chinese currency. The following is the fifth and the current one, which was presented first on October 1, 1999 by People's Bank of China and was re-issued in 2005 with added security devices into the design of the 1999 version.

Here are one yuan and five yuan bills, both sides