Renminbi
official currency of the People's Republic of China

Renminbi (; Chinese: 人民币; symbol: ¥; ISO code: CNY; abbreviation: RMB) is the official currency of the People's Republic of China and the unrecognized territory of Wa State. The currency is issued by the People's Bank of China, the country's monetary authority. It is the world's fifth-most-traded currency as of April 2025.
The yuan (元) is the base unit of renminbi. Each yuan is divided into 10 jiao (角), and each jiao is further subdivided into 10 fen (分; a total of 100 fen in each yuan). However, fen-denominated coins are now rarely used due to inflation. The word yuan is widely used to refer to the Chinese currency generally, especially in international contexts.
Exchange rate
Until 2005, the exchange rate of the renminbi was pegged to the US dollar. As China pursued the reform and opening up to transition from central planning to a market economy and increased its participation in foreign trade, the renminbi was devalued to increase the competitiveness of Chinese industry. It has previously been claimed that the renminbi's official exchange rate was undervalued by as much as 37.5% against its purchasing power parity.
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Named sources, stable identifiers and responsible institutions provide the strongest route from overview to verifiable evidence. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 12, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q39099. The Library of Congress control number is sh2006007426. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 1 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 2025 and 2005.
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This entry incorporates text from “Renminbi” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.