How the yuan is quoted: parity, bank rates, offshore CNH

On 12 October 2026 the same dollar had four prices in China, and all of them were published.

The central parity was 6.7313 yuan per dollar (PBOC announcement, 12 October 2026). Bank of China’s posted counter rates that afternoon were 6.6802 when the bank buys a dollar from a customer and 6.7083 when it sells, the same figures in the transfer and the cash column (Bank of China foreign exchange rates, read 2026-10-12, page stamped 14:52:16). A third figure on that page, 折算价, was 6.7313 — the parity, printed again.

Offshore, in Hong Kong, the same currency trades under another name, CNH.

Who publishes the parity, and how it is calculated

The parity, 中间价, is calculated and published by the China Foreign Exchange Trade System (CFETS) under authorisation from the central bank. A rule in force since 1 February 2026 says CFETS may calculate, form and publish the central parity from the quotes of qualifying institutions, and that a contributing institution may not pass its quote to anyone else (PBOC Order 2025 No. 13, Interbank Foreign Exchange Market Administration Rules, Article 17).

The method is published too. CFETS takes quotes from market makers before the interbank market opens; they refer to the previous day’s close and weigh supply, demand and moves in major currencies. CFETS then drops the highest and lowest quote and averages the rest, weighted by each quoter’s trading volume and record (CFETS, central parity, read 2026-10-12). The 2014 notice describes the same procedure without the reference to the previous close (PBOC notice Yinfa 2014 No. 188, 1 July 2014, Article 2), so CFETS’s wording is the newer one.

Not all of the parities are formed that way. Under the 2014 notice, the euro, Hong Kong dollar and Canadian dollar figures are derived from the day’s dollar parity and the 9:00 a.m. international rates of those currencies against the dollar, while the yen, pound, Australian dollar, New Zealand dollar, ringgit and rouble are averaged from the direct-trading market makers’ quotes (Order 188, Article 3). CFETS’s live page draws the line elsewhere: it counts the euro and the Canadian dollar in the averaged group of 22, and gives the Hong Kong dollar and the pataca the cross-rate treatment (CFETS, read 2026-10-12).

The parities for ten currencies are published at 9:15 a.m. each working day, and hold until the next one (Order 188, Article 1).

The announcement carries 25 currencies, and the quotation direction differs. Ten are quoted as yuan per unit of foreign currency, the yen per 100. The other 15 — pataca, ringgit, rouble, rand, won, dirham, riyal, forint, zloty, krone, krona, Norwegian krone, lira, peso, baht — are quoted the other way; SAFE’s page puts the same 15 under indirect quotation, 100 yuan in foreign currency (SAFE, read 2026-10-12). The 12 October announcement printed “one yuan to 1.2015 patacas” and “one yuan to 199.73 won” (PBOC, 12 October 2026).

The band is a rule for one market

On the interbank spot market, quotes and trades may not move more than a set distance from the parity; the sizes are set and published by the central bank (Order 2025 No. 13, Article 18). The current sizes come from the 2014 notice: two per cent either side for the dollar, three per cent for the euro, yen, Hong Kong dollar, pound, Australian dollar, Canadian dollar and New Zealand dollar, five per cent for the ringgit and the rouble (Order 188, Article 4).

The 2005 reform set the dollar’s daily range at three per thousand around the published middle price (PBOC announcement 2005 No. 16, 21 July 2005, Article 4). On 17 March 2014 it went from one per cent to two (PBOC announcement 2014 No. 5, English text, 7 March 2014).

The interbank market, as the 2026 rules define it, is the market for renminbi against foreign currency conducted through CFETS (Order 2025 No. 13, Article 2); those rules do not apply to offshore-nature trading by domestic institutions (Article 32).

What a bank counter posts

A bank’s table works differently. Bank of China posts five figures per currency: its buying rates for foreign currency held as a transfer or as cash, its selling rates, and 折算价, a reference figure (note 1).

Three things stand out. The buy and sell prices are 2.81 yuan apart per 100 dollars, 0.42 per cent of the parity. A customer selling dollars receives 0.76 per cent less than the parity; one buying them pays 0.34 per cent more. Those four figures are my arithmetic. And the reference figure sits above both the buy and the sell price, because it is the parity itself: 673.13 per 100 is 6.7313, published at 9:15 that morning.

Bank of China’s notes explain part of the shape. The unit is 100 units of foreign currency in yuan; the table is for reference, and the rate that applies is the one the counter or the app gives at the time (note 1). Its system was upgraded on 30 October 2011, splitting the single 卖出价 column into 现汇卖出价 and 现钞卖出价 (note 3).

The columns are not always equal and not always filled. On 12 October the dollar row carried the same number in both columns. The New Taiwan dollar row left the transfer columns empty and posted cash rates only — 20.10 to buy, 22.02 to sell, against a reference of 20.98, a gap of 9.2 per cent (my arithmetic). Ten further rows were posted that way, among them the Brunei dollar, the Indian rupee and the Kuwaiti dinar; six, the ringgit and the Polish zloty included, carried transfer rates only; the other 28 carried all four (counts are my own). A visitor opening an account meets the same table at the counter, and the documents that route asks for are in opening a bank account in China as a visitor.

Why the spread is the bank’s decision

Until July 2014 the state capped it. A 2005 notice limited the dollar’s posted transfer spread to 1 per cent of the parity and its cash spread to 4 per cent (PBOC notice Yinfa 2005 No. 250, 23 September 2005, Article 2; SAFE marks the page abolished). The 2014 notice removed the cap: a bank may post its own renminbi rates against any currency, with no limit on the transfer or cash spread (Order 188, Article 5); it abolished the three documents that had carried the caps (Article 6).

That 4 per cent ceiling is the clearest official statement that a cash rate sits further from the parity than a transfer rate; it is no longer a rule, and one large bank now posts the two as one.

Offshore, the same currency has another market

CNH is the offshore renminbi. The Hong Kong Monetary Authority calls the offshore market in Hong Kong the CNH market and designates primary liquidity providers for it: eleven banks for a two-year term from 27 October 2024, whose shared repo facility went from 18 billion to 20 billion yuan (HKMA, 25 October 2024). On 7 July 2026 the HKMA, the central bank and the Securities and Futures Commission announced measures including raising the HKMA’s RMB Business Facility from 200 billion to 500 billion yuan, effective 10 July 2026 (HKMA, 7 July 2026).

That market has its own benchmark. The Treasury Markets Association of Hong Kong launched a spot USD/CNY(HK) fixing on 27 June 2011 — middle quotes from 15 banks, the two highest and two lowest dropped (TMA, 23 June 2011). Since 1 August 2016 it is calculated from actual trades in a 30-minute window centred at 11 a.m. and named the USD/CNY(HK) Spot Rate. The latest figure on the page when I looked, 6.6974, was dated 9 October, against an onshore parity of 6.7330 that morning: 0.53 per cent stronger offshore, my arithmetic (TMA market data, read 2026-10-12). Hong Kong Exchanges and Clearing settles its USD/CNH futures on the benchmark; the contract, listed since September 2012 and settled in renminbi, uses the TMA rate published at or around 11:30 a.m. on the last trading day (HKEX, page updated 1 March 2023).

Neither the 2014 notice nor the 2026 rules quote an offshore rate. The band is written for the market run through CFETS.

Where to read the official numbers

The PBOC index lists 8 October after 30 September, with nothing between: the holiday week.

How I checked this

Everything was fetched on 12 October 2026, between about 14:50 and 15:30 Beijing time, except the previous working day’s parity and the offshore figure, both dated. All of it came from the publishers’ own pages. The bank table is republished through the day, so the figures above are the ones under the stamp given, and a later read will differ.

To date the rules I used SAFE’s catalogue of foreign exchange regulations in force as at 30 June 2026 (PDF, read 2026-10-12): Order 188 is item 137 under exchange rates, with no amending footnote, and Order 2025 No. 13, adopted on 4 December 2025 and issued on 16 December 2025, took effect on 1 February 2026.

What I could not check

• A same-day offshore rate. Nothing above is a same-day offshore figure: the association’s free page is delayed by 24 hours or more (TMA market data, read 2026-10-12).
• How far the onshore and offshore quotes may diverge. No page I read states a limit, and I will not infer one.
• The 9:15 rule against the page’s own clock. Order 188 says 9:15 a.m. Both announcements I read on the central bank’s site carry a posting stamp of 09:25:07, on 12 October and on 9 October alike. No page explains the ten minutes, and the fixing is dated, not timed.
• Whether the dollar’s transfer and cash rates are meant to be identical. Note 3 explains when the columns were split; it does not say when the two figures are meant to match, and I read one day only.
• Why some rows leave columns blank. Note 4 says the currencies handled depend on the branch; the page does not say why a row is posted in one form and not the other.
• The TMA’s publication time. The 2011 launch release puts the fixing at 11:00 a.m., publication at 11:15; HKEX says the rate it settles on is published at or around 11:30. Both are official and they do not agree.
• Rates at a counter I have used. Deliberately absent. A branch rate can differ from the page, as note 1 says.