History

The renminbi was first issued shortly before the takeover of the mainland by the Communists in 1949. One of the first tasks of the new communist government was to end the hyperinflation that had plagued China near the end of the Kuomintang era. A revaluation occurred in 1955 at the rate of 1 new yuan =10,000 old yuan.

Yuan and other renminbi units

The base unit of the renminbi is the yuan. As with Chinese numerals, this character has two forms — a common simplified form (元) and a formal form (圆/圓) used to prevent alterations and accounting mistakes.

RMB series

The denomination of each banknote is given in Chinese. The numbers themselves are given in financial Chinese numeral characters, as well as Arabic numerals. The denomination and the words 'China People's Bank' are also given in Mongol, Tibetan, Uyghur and Zhuang on the back of each banknote. On the front of the note is also the representation of the denomination in Chinese Braille starting from the fourth series.

First series

Second series

Third series

Fourth series

Fifth series

First (1999) edition

Coins of the first edition replaces all 3 values from the previous series, namely ¥0.1, ¥0.5, and ¥1. It should be noted that the Emblem of the People's Republic of China of the previous series has been removed and the title of the state has been replaced "People's Bank of China". 1 jiao (¥0.1) also shrunk in size.

Second (2005) edition

The 2005 edition was introduced since August 31, 2005 with the following banknotes and coin affected:

Possible future design

On March 13, 2006, BBC reported that some delegates to an advisory body at the National People's Congress proposed to include Sun Yat-sen and Deng Xiaoping on the Renminbi banknotes. However the proposal is a long way from becoming law.

Exchange rate

Mainland China's currency, which for the previous decade had been tightly pegged at 8.28 renminbi to the U.S. dollar, was revalued on July 21, 2005 to 8.11 per U.S. dollar, following the removal of the peg to the US dollar and pressure from the United States. The People's Bank of China also announced that the renminbi would be pegged to a basket of foreign currencies, rather than being strictly tied to the U.S. dollar, and would trade within a narrow 0.3% band against this basket of currencies. The PRC has stated that the basket is dominated by the U.S. dollar, Euro, Japanese yen and South Korean won, with a smaller proportion made up of the British pound, Thai baht, Russian ruble, Australian dollar, Canadian dollar and Singapore dollar.

Purchasing power

The World Bank's World Development Indicators 2005 estimates that one United States dollar is equivalent to approximately 1.8 Renminbi by purchasing power parity in 2003. [12]

Controversy: Is the renminbi undervalued?

External links

• (Chinese) (English) SinoBanknote
• How to detect counterfeit Chinese money
• Banknotes of China
• Photographs of all Chinese currency and sound of pronunciation in Chinese
• What is the new Chinese currency regime?
• RMB current exchange rate and historical graphs
• Economist article on Chinese currency valuation
• Discussion on how the basket peg works
• Buy Chinese Yuan?
• China Severs Its Currency's Link to Dollar, Washington Post, 21 July 2005
• China lifts currency basket lid, BBC, 10 August 2005

Find out more about RMB on Wikipedia