General Information » Money » Local Currency

Taking its name from the People’s Bank of China (Zhongguo Renmin Yinhang), Chinese currency is known as Renminbi or ‘people’s money’. The basic unit of Renminbi is the yuan (or kuai in the spoken form). One yuan is made up of ten jiao (mao in the spoken form), and one jiao is subsequently broken down into ten fen. Only yuan come in paper notes, and are available in the following denominations: 100, 50, 20, 10, 5 and 1. Available coins are: 1 yuan, 5 jiao, 1 jiao and the now rarely used 5 fen, 2 fen and 1 fen.

Until 2005, the Renminbi was pegged at a fixed exchange rate to the US dollar. Pressure from US and G7 finance ministers then pushed the Chinese government to change their policy and to instead peg the Renminbi to a basket of world currencies. Renminbi is a relatively stable currency and is now fully accepted in Hong Kong as well as in parts of some other Asian countries such as Vietnam.