Home China Facts Chinese Yuan

Chinese Yuan, Jiao and Fen

The second version of Chinese currency Renminbi (RMB), ten yuan (kuai) bill, both sides. This is the biggest bill during that time.

A Overview of Today's Chinese Currency

(If you come from the previous page Renminbi (RMB), you can skip this overview to see the 2nd version of China currency below.)

The present China currency is called Yuan. 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."

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

10 fen = 1 jiao (or 1 mao)
10 jiao = 1 yuan ( or 1 kuai)
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.

Chinese Yuan: the Looks of Chinese Money Part 2

There are five versions of Chinese currency. The following is the second one, which was presented by People's Bank of China on March 1st, 1955 when China found that the face value for the first version of currency were too big and the paper quality wasn't good enough.

The biggest bill for this version is 10 yuan. The ratio between the first version and this version is 10,000:1. The circulation of the first version was gradually stopped.

Here are three yuan (kuai) and five yuan (kuai) bills, both sides