Tomb Robber ( Chinese : 密道追踪之阴兵虎符 ) is a 2014 Chinese action adventure suspense thriller film directed by Yu Dao. It was released on December 5, 2014.
123-560: By December 8, 2014, the film had earned ¥ 5.04 million at the Chinese box office. This article related to a Chinese film of the 2010s is a stub . You can help Misplaced Pages by expanding it . This article about an action thriller film is a stub . You can help Misplaced Pages by expanding it . Chinese yuan The renminbi ( Chinese : 人民币 ; pinyin : Rénmínbì ; lit. 'People's Currency'; symbol : ¥ ; ISO code : CNY ; abbreviation : RMB ), also known as
246-419: A digital renminbi was going to be released after years of preparation. This version of the currency, also called DCEP (Digital Currency Electronic Payment), can be “decoupled” from the banking system to give visiting tourists a taste of the nation's burgeoning cashless society . The announcement received a variety of responses: some believe it is more about domestic control and surveillance. Some argue that
369-694: A dragon on the obverse and the reverse features the China Millennium monument (at the Center for Cultural and Scientific Fairs). For the 2008 Beijing Olympics , a green ¥10 note was issued featuring the Bird's Nest Stadium on the front with the back showing a classical Olympic discus thrower and various other athletes. On 26 November 2015, the People's Bank of China issued a blue ¥100 commemorative note to commemorate aerospace science and technology. In commemoration of
492-424: A reserve currency is above 60%, while that of the renminbi is about 2%. In April 2020, The Guardian reported that the digital currency e-RMB had been adopted into multiple cities' monetary systems and "some government employees and public servants [will] receive their salaries in the digital currency from May. The Guardian quoted a China Daily report which stated "A sovereign digital currency provides
615-544: A | and single-storey | ɑ | forms both representing the Latin letter ⟨ A ⟩ . Variants also emerge for aesthetic reasons, to make handwriting easier, or to correct what the writer perceives to be errors in a character's form. Individual components may be replaced with visually, phonetically, or semantically similar alternatives. The boundary between character structure and style—and thus whether forms represent different characters, or are merely variants of
738-437: A brush onto silk, bamboo, or paper, and being printed using woodblocks and moveable type . Technologies invented since the 19th century allowing for wider use of characters include telegraph codes and typewriters , as well as input methods and text encodings on computers. Chinese characters are accepted as representing one of four independent inventions of writing in human history. In each instance, writing evolved from
861-416: A character's meaning. Examples of phono-semantic compounds include 河 ( hé ; 'river'), 湖 ( hú ; 'lake'), 流 ( liú ; 'stream'), 沖 ( chōng ; 'surge'), and 滑 ( huá ; 'slippery'). Each of these characters have three short strokes on their left-hand side: 氵 , a simplified combining form of ⽔ 'WATER' . This component serves
984-594: A digital currency "doesn't solve the problem that some people holding renminbi offshore will want to sell that renminbi and exchange it for the dollar", as the dollar is considered to be a safer asset. Eswar Prasad , an economics professor at Cornell University , said that the digital renminbi "will hardly put a dent in the dollar's status as the dominant global reserve currency" due to the United States' "economic dominance, deep and liquid capital markets, and still-robust institutional framework". The U.S. dollar's share as
1107-428: A few characters in length at their shortest, to several dozen at their longest. The Shang king would communicate with his ancestors by means of scapulimancy , inquiring about subjects such as the royal family, military success, and the weather. Inscriptions were made in the divination material itself before and after it had been cracked by exposure to heat; they generally include a record of the questions posed, as well as
1230-493: A functional alternative to the dollar settlement system and blunts the impact of any sanctions or threats of exclusion both at a country and company level. It may also facilitate integration into globally traded currency markets with a reduced risk of politically inspired disruption." There were talks of testing out the digital renminbi in the Beijing Winter Olympics in 2022, but China's overall timetable for rolling out
1353-690: A given position in the compound. Components within a character may serve a specific function: phonetic components provide a hint for the character's pronunciation, and semantic components indicate some element of the character's meaning. Components that serve neither function may be classified as pure signs with no particular meaning, other than their presence distinguishing one character from another. A straightforward structural classification scheme may consist of three pure classes of semantographs , phonographs and signs —having only semantic, phonetic, and form components respectively, as well as classes corresponding to each combination of component types. Of
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#17328515706911476-403: A key element for a market-oriented economy. A floating exchange rate regime and convertibility for renminbi were seen as the ultimate goal of the reform. Conditional convertibility under current account was achieved by allowing firms to surrender their foreign exchange earning from current account transactions and purchase foreign exchange as needed. Restrictions on Foreign Direct Investment (FDI)
1599-558: A language. Specifically, characters represent the smallest units of meaning in a language, which are referred to as morphemes . Morphemes in Chinese—and therefore the characters used to write them—are nearly always a single syllable in length. In some special cases, characters may denote non-morphemic syllables as well; due to this, written Chinese is often characterized as morphosyllabic . Logographs may be contrasted with letters in an alphabet , which generally represent phonemes ,
1722-406: A line, and later evolved into their present forms with less potential for graphical ambiguity in context. More complex indicatives include 凸 ('convex'), 凹 ('concave'), and 平 ('flat and level'). Compound ideographs ( 会意 ; 會意 ; huìyì )—also called logical aggregates , associative idea characters , or syssemantographs —combine other characters to convey
1845-542: A mature form, also called 八分 ( bāfēn ). Bamboo slips discovered during the late 20th century point to this maturation being completed during the reign of Emperor Wu of Han ( r. 141–87 BCE ). This process, called libian ( 隶变 ; 隸變 ), involved character forms being mutated and simplified, with many components being consolidated, substituted, or omitted. In turn, the components themselves were regularized to use fewer, straighter, and more well-defined strokes. The resulting clerical forms largely lacked any of
1968-419: A model first popularized in the 2nd-century Shuowen Jiezi dictionary. More recent models have analysed the methods used to create characters, how characters are structured, and how they function in a given writing system. Most characters can be analysed structurally as compounds made of smaller components ( 部件 ; bùjiàn ), which are often independent characters in their own right, adjusted to occupy
2091-685: A new, synthetic meaning. A canonical example is 明 ('bright'), interpreted as the juxtaposition of the two brightest objects in the sky: ⽇ 'SUN' and ⽉ 'MOON' , together expressing their shared quality of brightness. Other examples include 休 ('rest'), composed of pictographs ⼈ 'MAN' and ⽊ 'TREE' , and 好 ('good'), composed of ⼥ 'WOMAN' and ⼦ 'CHILD' . Many traditional examples of compound ideographs are now believed to have actually originated as phono-semantic compounds, made obscure by subsequent changes in pronunciation. For example,
2214-662: A result of foreign exchange management reforms approved by the 14th Central Committee of the Chinese Communist Party , the renminbi was officially devalued from US$ 1 = ¥5.5 to over ¥8, and the FEC was retired at ¥1 FEC = ¥1 RMB in favour of tourists directly using the renminbi. In November 1993, the Third Plenum of the 14th Central Committee of the Chinese Communist Party approved a comprehensive reform strategy in which foreign exchange management reforms were highlighted as
2337-719: A semantic component. Pictographs have often been extended from their original meanings to take on additional layers of metaphor and synecdoche , which sometimes displace the character's original sense. When this process results in excessive ambiguity between distinct senses written with the same character, it is usually resolved by new compounds being derived to represent particular senses. Indicatives ( 指事 ; zhǐshì ), also called simple ideographs or self-explanatory characters , are visual representations of abstract concepts that lack any tangible form. Examples include 上 ('up') and 下 ('down')—these characters were originally written as dots placed above and below
2460-563: A semantic function in each example, indicating the character has some meaning related to water. The remainder of each character is its phonetic component: 湖 ( hú ) is pronounced identically to 胡 ( hú ) in Standard Chinese, 河 ( hé ) is pronounced similarly to 可 ( kě ), and 沖 ( chōng ) is pronounced similarly to 中 ( zhōng ). The phonetic components of most compounds may only provide an approximate pronunciation, even before subsequent sound shifts in
2583-424: A share of their foreign exchange earnings, referred to as foreign exchange quotas. At the same time, the government introduced measures to allow retention of part of the foreign exchange earnings from non-trade sources, such as overseas remittances, port fees paid by foreign vessels, and tourism. As early as October 1980, exporting firms that retained foreign exchange above their own import needs were allowed to sell
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#17328515706912706-429: A stylus in clay moulds used to cast ritual bronzes . Characters have also been incised into stone, or written in ink onto slips of silk, wood, and bamboo. The invention of paper for use as a writing medium occurred during the 1st century CE, and is traditionally credited to Cai Lun ( d. 121 CE ). There are numerous styles, or scripts ( 书 ; 書 ; shū ) in which characters can be written, including
2829-540: A system using two distinct types of ideographs . Ideographs could either be pictographs visually depicting objects or concepts, or fixed signs representing concepts only by shared convention. These systems are classified as proto-writing , because the techniques they used were insufficient to carry the meaning of spoken language by themselves. Various innovations were required for Chinese characters to emerge from proto-writing. Firstly, pictographs became distinct from simple pictures in use and appearance: for example,
2952-540: A time and without indicating any greater context. Qiu concludes, "We simply possess no basis for saying that they were already being used to record language." A historical connection with the symbols used by the late Neolithic Dawenkou culture ( c. 4300 – c. 2600 BCE ) in Shandong has been deemed possible by palaeographers, with Qiu concluding that they "cannot be definitively treated as primitive writing, nevertheless they are symbols which resemble most
3075-811: A transitional form between clerical and regular script which remained in use through the Three Kingdoms period (220–280 CE) and beyond. Cursive script ( 草书 ; 草書 ; cǎoshū ) was in use as early as 24 BCE, synthesizing elements of the vulgar writing that had originated in Qin with flowing cursive brushwork. By the Jin dynasty (266–420), the Han cursive style became known as 章草 ( zhāngcǎo ; 'orderly cursive'), sometimes known in English as 'clerical cursive', 'ancient cursive', or 'draft cursive'. Some attribute this name to
3198-510: A village near Anyang in Henan —discovered to be the site of Yin , the final Shang capital—which was excavated by a team led by Li Ji (1896–1979) from the Academia Sinica between 1928 and 1937. To date, over 150 000 oracle bone fragments have been found. Oracle bone inscriptions recorded divinations undertaken to communicate with the spirits of royal ancestors. The inscriptions range from
3321-481: A well-developed writing system, which suggests an initial emergence predating the late 2nd millennium BCE. Although written Chinese is first attested in official divinations, it is widely believed that writing was also used for other purposes during the Shang, but that the media used in other contexts—likely bamboo and wooden slips —were less durable than bronzes or oracle bones, and have not been preserved. As early as
3444-414: A word is used to indicate a different word with a similar pronunciation, depending on context. This allowed for words that lacked a plausible pictographic representation to be written down for the first time. This technique preempted more sophisticated methods of character creation that would further expand the lexicon. The process whereby writing emerged from proto-writing took place over a long period; when
3567-638: Is carried out by a state owned corporation, China Banknote Printing and Minting Corporation ( CBPMC ; 中国印钞造币总公司 ) headquartered in Beijing . CBPMC uses several printing, engraving and minting facilities around the country to produce banknotes and coins for subsequent distribution. Banknote printing facilities are based in Beijing, Shanghai , Chengdu , Xi'an , Shijiazhuang , and Nanchang . Mints are located in Nanjing , Shanghai, and Shenyang . Also, high grade paper for
3690-474: Is given by Xu as 轉注 ( zhuǎnzhù ; 'reversed and refocused'); however, its definition is unclear, and it is generally disregarded by modern scholars. Modern scholars agree that the theory presented in the Shuowen Jiezi is problematic, failing to fully capture the nature of Chinese writing, both in the present, as well as at the time Xu was writing. Traditional Chinese lexicography as embodied in
3813-399: Is not required, and character forms may be accentuated to evoke a variety of aesthetic effects. Traditional ideals of calligraphic beauty often tie into broader philosophical concepts native to East Asia. For example, aesthetics can be conceptualized using the framework of yin and yang , where the extremes of any number of mutually reinforcing dualities are balanced by the calligrapher—such as
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3936-402: Is now written with five strokes instead of eight, and a system of five basic stroke types is commonly employed in analysis—with certain compound strokes treated as sequences of basic strokes made in a single motion. Characters are constructed according to predictable visual patterns. Some components have distinct combining forms when occupying specific positions within a character—for example,
4059-512: Is printed in simplified written Chinese . The numbers themselves are printed in financial Chinese numeral characters, as well as Arabic numerals . The denomination and the words "People's Bank of China" are also printed in Mongolian , Tibetan , Uyghur and Zhuang on the back of each banknote, in addition to the boldface Hanyu Pinyin "Zhongguo Renmin Yinhang" (without tones). The right front of
4182-457: Is regularly done with corporate brand names: for example, Coca-Cola 's Chinese name is 可口可乐 ; 可口可樂 ( Kěkǒu Kělè ; 'delicious enjoyable'). Some characters and components are pure signs , whose meaning merely derives from their having a fixed and distinct form. Basic examples of pure signs are found with the numerals beyond four, e.g. 五 ('five') and 八 ('eight'), whose forms do not give visual hints to
4305-567: Is sometimes referred to as the "redback", a play on "greenback", a slang term for the US dollar . The various currencies called yuan or dollar issued in mainland China as well as Taiwan , Hong Kong , Macau and Singapore were all derived from the Spanish dollar , which China imported in large quantities from Spanish America from the 16th to 20th centuries. The first locally minted silver dollar or yuan accepted all over Qing dynasty China (1644–1912)
4428-470: Is to distinguish the rates from those fixed by Chinese central banks on the mainland. The abbreviation RMB is not an ISO code but is sometimes used like one by banks and financial institutions. The currency symbol for the yuan unit is ¥ , but when distinction from the Japanese yen is required RMB (e.g. RMB 10,000) or ¥ RMB (e.g. ¥10,000 RMB) is used. However, in written Chinese contexts,
4551-463: Is widely used to refer to the Chinese currency generally, especially in international contexts. Until 2005, the value of the renminbi was pegged to the US dollar . As China pursued its 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
4674-446: The I ;Ching . According to one tradition, Chinese characters were invented during the 3rd millennium BCE by Cangjie , a scribe of the legendary Yellow Emperor . Cangjie is said to have invented symbols called 字 ( zì ) due to his frustration with the limitations of knotting, taking inspiration from his study of the tracks of animals, landscapes, and the stars in the sky. On
4797-548: The ⼑ 'KNIFE' component appears as 刂 on the right side of characters, but as ⺈ at the top of characters. The order in which components are drawn within a character is fixed. The order in which the strokes of a component are drawn is also largely fixed, but may vary according to several different standards. This is summed up in practice with a few rules of thumb, including that characters are generally assembled from left to right, then from top to bottom, with "enclosing" components started before, then closed after,
4920-646: The 3500 characters that are frequently used in Standard Chinese, pure semantographs are estimated to be the rarest, accounting for about 5% of the lexicon, followed by pure signs with 18%, and semantic–form and phonetic–form compounds together accounting for 19%. The remaining 58% are phono-semantic compounds. The Chinese palaeographer Qiu Xigui ( b. 1935 ) presents three principles of character function adapted from earlier proposals by Tang Lan [ zh ] (1901–1979) and Chen Mengjia (1911–1966), with semantographs describing all characters whose forms are wholly related to their meaning, regardless of
5043-914: The Chinese Communist Party took control of ever larger territories in the latter part of the Chinese Civil War , its People's Bank of China began to issue a unified currency in 1948 for use in Communist-controlled territories. Also denominated in yuan , this currency was identified by different names, including "People's Bank of China banknotes" ( simplified Chinese : 中国人民银行钞票 ; traditional Chinese : 中國人民銀行鈔票 ; from November 1948), "New Currency" ( simplified Chinese : 新币 ; traditional Chinese : 新幣 ; from December 1948), "People's Bank of China notes" ( simplified Chinese : 中国人民银行券 ; traditional Chinese : 中國人民銀行券 ; from January 1949), "People's Notes" (人民券, as an abbreviation of
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5166-471: The Chinese character for yuan (Chinese: 元 ; lit. 'constituent', 'part') or, in formal contexts Chinese: 圆 ; lit. 'round', usually follows the number in lieu of a currency symbol. Renminbi is the name of the currency while yuan is the name of the primary unit of the renminbi. This is analogous to the distinction between " sterling " and " pound " when discussing
5289-457: The Chinese yuan , is the official currency of the People's Republic of China . The renminbi is issued by the People's Bank of China , the monetary authority of China. It is the world's fifth-most-traded currency as of April 2022. The yuan ( 元 ) is the basic unit of the renminbi. One yuan is divided into 10 jiao ( 角 ), and the jiao is further subdivided into 10 fen ( 分 ). The word yuan
5412-753: The Ming (1368–1644) and Qing dynasties (1644–1912) led to considerable standardization in character forms, which prefigured later script reforms during the 20th century. This print orthography , exemplified by the 1716 Kangxi Dictionary , was later dubbed the jiu zixing ('old character shapes'). Printed Chinese characters may use different typefaces , of which there are four broad classes in use: Before computers became ubiquitous, earlier electro-mechanical communications devices like telegraphs and typewriters were originally designed for use with alphabets, often by means of alphabetic text encodings like Morse code and ASCII . Adapting these technologies for use with
5535-504: The National People's Congress proposed to include Sun Yat-sen and Deng Xiaoping on the renminbi banknotes. However, the proposal was not adopted. Chinese character Chinese characters are logographs used to write the Chinese languages and others from regions historically influenced by Chinese culture . Chinese characters have a documented history spanning over three millennia, representing one of
5658-467: The Shuowen Jiezi describes 信 ('trust') as an ideographic compound of ⼈ 'MAN' and ⾔ 'SPEECH' , but modern analyses instead identify it as a phono-semantic compound—though with disagreement as to which component is phonetic. Peter A. Boodberg and William G. Boltz go so far as to deny that any compound ideographs were devised in antiquity, maintaining that secondary readings that are now lost are responsible for
5781-462: The Shuowen Jiezi has suggested implausible etymologies for some characters. Moreover, several categories are considered to be ill-defined: for example, it is unclear whether characters like 大 ('large') should be classified as pictographs or indicatives. However, awareness of the 'six writings' model has remained a common component of character literacy, and often serves as a tool for students memorizing characters. The broadest trend in
5904-576: The Shuowen Jiezi . For nearly two millennia, this scheme was the primary framework for character analysis used throughout the Sinosphere. Xu based most of his analysis on examples of Qin seal script that were written down several centuries before his time—these were usually the oldest specimens available to him, though he stated he was aware of the existence of even older forms. The first five categories are pictographs, indicatives, compound ideographs, phono-semantic compounds, and loangraphs. The sixth category
6027-507: The Sinosphere . In Japanese , Korean , and Vietnamese , Chinese characters are known as kanji , hanja , and chữ Hán respectively. Writing traditions also emerged for some of the other languages of China , like the sawndip script used to write the Zhuang languages of Guangxi . Each of these written vernaculars used existing characters to write the language's native vocabulary, as well as
6150-557: The Sui dynasty (581–618) required test takers to write in Literary Chinese using regular script, which contributed to the prevalence of both throughout later Chinese history. Each character of a text is written within a uniform square allotted for it. As part of the evolution from seal script into clerical script, character components became regularized as discrete series of strokes ( 笔画 ; 筆畫 ; bǐhuà ). Strokes can be considered both
6273-470: The loanwords it borrowed from Chinese . In addition, each invented characters for local use. In written Korean and Vietnamese, Chinese characters have largely been replaced with alphabets, leaving Japanese as the only major non-Chinese language still written using them. At the most basic level, characters are composed of strokes that are written in a fixed order. Methods of writing characters have historically included being carved into stone, being inked with
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#17328515706916396-705: The 70th Anniversary of the issuance of the Renminbi, the People's Bank of China issued 120 million ¥50 banknotes on 28 December 2018. In commemoration of the 2022 Winter Olympics , the People's Bank of China issued ¥20 commemorative banknotes in both paper and polymer in December 2021. In commemoration of the 2024 Chinese New Year, the People's Bank of China issued ¥20 commemorative banknotes in polymer in January 2024. The renminbi yuan has different names when used in ethnic minority regions of China. Renminbi currency production
6519-496: The 84 patents reviewed by the Financial Times indicate that China may plan to algorithmically adjust the supply of a central bank digital currency based on certain triggers, such as loan interest rates . Other patents are focused on building digital currency chip cards or digital currency wallets that banking consumers could potentially use, which would be linked directly to their bank accounts. The patent filings also point to
6642-500: The Buddhist terminology introduced to China in antiquity, as well as contemporary non-Chinese words and names. For example, each character in the name 加拿大 ( Jiānádà ; 'Canada') is often used as a loangraph for its respective syllable. However, the barrier between a character's pronunciation and meaning is never total: when transcribing into Chinese, loangraphs are often chosen deliberately as to create certain connotations. This
6765-517: The People's Republic of China. It was issued only in paper form at first, and replaced the various currencies circulating in the areas controlled by the Communists . One of the first tasks of the new government was to end the hyperinflation that had plagued China in the final years of the Kuomintang (KMT) era. That achieved, a revaluation occurred in 1955 at the rate of 1 new yuan = 10,000 old yuan. As
6888-412: The People's Republic of China: In 1999, a commemorative red ¥50 note was issued in honour of the 50th anniversary of the establishment of the People's Republic of China. This note features Chinese Communist Party chairman Mao Zedong on the front and various animals on the back. An orange polymer note , commemorating the new millennium was issued in 2000 with a face value of ¥100. This features
7011-457: The Qin small seal script was standardized for use throughout the entire country under the direction of Chancellor Li Si ( c. 280 – 208 BCE). It was traditionally believed that Qin scribes only used small seal script, and the later clerical script was a sudden invention during the early Han. However, more than one script was used by Qin scribes: a rectilinear vulgar style had also been in use in Qin for centuries prior to
7134-410: The Shang royal house. Contemporaneous inscriptions in a related but distinct style were also made on ritual bronze vessels. This oracle bone script ( 甲骨文 ; jiǎgǔwén ) was first documented in 1899, after specimens were discovered being sold as "dragon bones" for medicinal purposes, with the symbols carved into them identified as early character forms. By 1928, the source of the bones had been traced to
7257-586: The Shang, the oracle bone script existed as a simplified form alongside another that was used in bamboo books, in addition to elaborate pictorial forms often used in clan emblems. These other forms have been preserved in what is called bronze script ( 金文 ; jīnwén ), where inscriptions were made using a stylus in a clay mould, which was then used to cast ritual bronzes . These differences in technique generally resulted in character forms that were less angular in appearance than their oracle bone script counterparts. Study of these bronze inscriptions has revealed that
7380-620: The Sinosphere during the 20th century as a result of Western influence. Many publications outside mainland China continue to use the traditional vertical writing direction. Western influence also resulted in the generalized use of punctuation being widely adopted in print during the 19th and 20th centuries. Prior to this, the context of a passage was considered adequate to guide readers; this was enabled by characters being easier than alphabets to read when written scriptio continua , due to their more discretized shapes. The earliest attested Chinese characters were carved into bone, or marked using
7503-462: The aluminium ¥0.01 and ¥0.02 coins ceased in 1991, with that of the ¥0.05 halting in 1994. The small coins were still struck for annual uncirculated mint sets in limited quantities, and from the beginning of 2005, the ¥0.01 coin got a new lease on life by being issued again every year since then up to present. New designs of the ¥0.1, ¥0.5 (now brass- plated steel), and ¥1 (nickel-plated steel) were again introduced in between 1999 and 2002. The ¥0.1
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#17328515706917626-659: The ancient pictographic script discovered thus far in China... They undoubtedly can be viewed as the forerunners of primitive writing." The oldest attested Chinese writing comprises a body of inscriptions produced during the Late Shang period ( c. 1250 – 1050 BCE), with the very earliest examples from the reign of Wu Ding dated between 1250 and 1200 BCE. Many of these inscriptions were made on oracle bones —usually either ox scapulae or turtle plastrons—and recorded official divinations carried out by
7749-436: The answers as interpreted in the cracks. A minority of bones feature characters that were inked with a brush before their strokes were incised; the evidence of this also shows that the conventional stroke orders used by later calligraphers had already been established for many characters by this point. Oracle bone script is the direct ancestor of later forms of written Chinese. The oldest known inscriptions already represent
7872-419: The apparent absence of phonetic indicators, but their arguments have been rejected by other scholars. Phono-semantic compounds ( 形声 ; 形聲 ; xíngshēng ) are composed of at least one semantic component and one phonetic component. They may be formed by one of several methods, often by adding a phonetic component to disambiguate a loangraph, or by adding a semantic component to represent a specific extension of
7995-491: The banknotes is produced at two facilities in Baoding and Kunshan. The Baoding facility is the largest facility in the world dedicated to developing banknote material according to its website. In addition, the People's Bank of China has its own printing technology research division that researches new techniques for creating banknotes and making counterfeiting more difficult. On 13 March 2006, some delegates to an advisory body at
8118-541: The basic unit of handwriting, as well as the writing system's basic unit of graphemic organization. In clerical and regular script, individual strokes traditionally belong to one of eight categories according to their technique and graphemic function. In what is known as the Eight Principles of Yong , calligraphers practice their technique using the character 永 ( yǒng ; 'eternity'), which can be written with one stroke of each type. In ordinary writing, 永
8241-492: The calligrapher Zhong Yao ( c. 151 – 230), who was living in the state of Cao Wei (220–266); he is often called the "father of regular script". The earliest surviving writing in regular script comprises copies of Zhong Yao's work, including at least one copy by Wang Xizhi. Characteristics of regular script include the 'pause' ( 頓 ; dùn ) technique used to end horizontal strokes, as well as heavy tails on diagonal strokes made going down and to
8364-639: The character as 明 . However, the increased usage of 朙 was followed by the proliferation of a third variant: 眀 , with ⽬ 'EYE' on the left—likely derived as a contraction of 朙 . Ultimately, 明 became the character's standard form. From the earliest inscriptions until the 20th century, texts were generally laid out vertically—with characters written from top to bottom in columns, arranged from right to left. Word boundaries are generally not indicated with spaces . A horizontal writing direction—with characters written from left to right in rows, arranged from top to bottom—only became predominant in
8487-456: The character's meaning. The first attested characters are oracle bone inscriptions made during the 13th century BCE in what is now Anyang , Henan, as part of divinations conducted by the Shang dynasty royal house. Character forms were originally highly pictographic in style, but evolved over time as writing spread across China. Numerous attempts have been made to reform the script, including
8610-403: The components they enclose. For example, 永 is drawn in the following order: Over a character's history, variant character forms ( 异体字 ; 異體字 ; yìtǐzì ) emerge via several processes. Variant forms have distinct structures, but represent the same morpheme; as such, they can be considered instances of the same underlying character. This is comparable to visually distinct double-storey |
8733-610: The day that these first characters were created, grain rained down from the sky; that night, the people heard the wailing of ghosts and demons, lamenting that humans could no longer be cheated. Collections of graphs and pictures have been discovered at the sites of several Neolithic settlements throughout the Yellow River valley, including Jiahu ( c. 6500 BCE ), Dadiwan and Damaidi (6th millennium BCE), and Banpo (5th millennium BCE). Symbols at each site were inscribed or drawn onto artefacts, appearing one at
8856-796: The digital currency was unclear. In May 2023, RMB interest rate swaps was launched. In June 2023, under the Government Green Bond Programme, the Government of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region of the People's Republic of China (HKSAR) announced a green bonds offering, of approximately US$ 6 billion denominated in USD , EUR and RMB. As of 2019, renminbi banknotes are available in denominations of ¥0.1, ¥0.5 (1 and 5 jiao), ¥1, ¥5, ¥10, ¥20, ¥50 and ¥100. These denominations have been available since 1955, except for
8979-417: The distinct process of semantic extension, where a word acquires additional senses, which often remain written with the same character. As both processes often result in a single character form being used to write several distinct meanings, loangraphs are often misidentified as being the result of semantic extension, and vice versa. Loangraphs are also used to write words borrowed from other languages, such as
9102-519: The distinct units of sound used by speakers of a language. Despite their origins in picture-writing, Chinese characters are no longer ideographs capable of representing ideas directly; their comprehension relies on the reader's knowledge of the particular language being written. The areas where Chinese characters were historically used—sometimes collectively termed the Sinosphere —have a long tradition of lexicography attempting to explain and refine their use; for most of history, analysis revolved around
9225-439: The duality between strokes made quickly or slowly, between applying ink heavily or lightly, between characters written with symmetrical or asymmetrical forms, and between characters representing concrete or abstract concepts. Woodblock printing was invented in China between the 6th and 9th centuries, followed by the invention of moveable type by Bi Sheng (972–1051) during the 11th century. The increasing use of print during
9348-504: The evolution of Chinese characters over their history has been simplification, both in graphical shape ( 字形 ; zìxíng ), the "external appearances of individual graphs", and in graphical form ( 字体 ; 字體 ; zìtǐ ), "overall changes in the distinguishing features of graphic[al] shape and calligraphic style, [...] in most cases refer[ring] to rather obvious and rather substantial changes". The traditional notion of an orderly procession of script styles, each suddenly appearing and displacing
9471-530: The excess through the state agency responsible for the management of China's exchange controls and its foreign exchange reserves, the State Administration of Exchange Control. Beginning in the mid-1980s, the government sanctioned foreign exchange markets, known as swap centres, eventually in most large cities. The government also gradually allowed market forces to take the dominant role by introducing an "internal settlement rate" of ¥2.8 to 1 US dollar which
9594-406: The extent that the original objects represented are no longer obvious. This proto-writing system was limited to representing a relatively narrow range of ideas with a comparatively small library of symbols. This compelled innovations that allowed for symbols to directly encode spoken language. In each historical case, this was accomplished by some form of the rebus technique, where the symbol for
9717-554: The fact that the style was considered more orderly than a later form referred to as 今草 ( jīncǎo ; 'modern cursive'), which had first emerged during the Jin and was influenced by semi-cursive and regular script. This later form was exemplified by the work of figures like Wang Xizhi (303–361), who is often regarded as the most important calligrapher in Chinese history. An early form of semi-cursive script ( 行书 ; 行書 ; xíngshū ; 'running script') can be identified during
9840-460: The forms of pictographs have been simplified in order to make them easier to write. As a result, modern readers generally cannot deduce what many pictographs were originally meant to resemble; without knowing the context of their origin in picture-writing, they may be interpreted instead as pure signs. However, if a pictograph's use in compounds still reflects its original meaning, as with 日 in 晴 ('clear sky'), it can still be analysed as
9963-607: The four independent inventions of writing accepted by scholars; of these, they comprise the only writing system continuously used since its invention. Over time, the function, style, and means of writing characters have evolved greatly. Unlike letters in alphabets that reflect the sounds of speech, Chinese characters generally represent morphemes , the units of meaning in a language. Writing a language's entire vocabulary requires thousands of different characters. Characters are created according to several different principles, where aspects of both shape and pronunciation may be used to indicate
10086-413: The government to provide imported machinery and equipment to priority industries at a relatively lower domestic currency cost than otherwise would have been possible. China's transition by the mid-1990s to a system in which the value of its currency was determined by supply and demand in a foreign exchange market was a gradual process spanning 15 years that involved changes in the official exchange rate,
10209-649: The historical forms like seal script and clerical script. Most styles used throughout the Sinosphere originated within China, though they may display regional variation. Styles that have been created outside of China tend to remain localized in their use: these include the Japanese edomoji and Vietnamese lệnh thư scripts. Calligraphy was traditionally one of the four arts to be mastered by Chinese scholars, considered to be an artful means of expressing thoughts and teachings. Chinese calligraphy typically makes use of an ink brush to write characters. Strict regularity
10332-401: The initial development of Chinese writing, and has remained common throughout its subsequent history. Some loangraphs ( 假借 ; jiǎjiè ; 'borrowing') are introduced to represent words previously lacking another written form—this is often the case with abstract grammatical particles such as 之 and 其 . The process of characters being borrowed as loangraphs should not be conflated with
10455-519: The integration of a digital currency system, choosing to embrace the blockchain technology. The patents reveal the extent of China's digital currency plans. The patents, seen and verified by the Financial Times , include proposals related to the issuance and supply of a central bank digital currency, a system for interbank settlements that uses the currency, and the integration of digital currency wallets into existing retail bank accounts. Several of
10578-435: The last name), and finally "People's Currency", or " renminbi ", from June 1949. From 1949 until the late 1970s, the state fixed China's exchange rate at a highly overvalued level as part of the country's import-substitution strategy. During this time frame, the focus of the state's central planning was to accelerate industrial development and reduce China's dependence on imported manufactured goods. The overvaluation allowed
10701-458: The last ¥0.5 and ¥1 issued in 1985. All jiǎo coins depicted similar designs to the fēn coins while the yuán depicted the Great Wall of China . In 1991, a new coinage was introduced, consisting of an aluminium ¥0.1, brass ¥0.5 and nickel - clad steel ¥1. These were smaller than the previous jiǎo and yuán coins and depicted flowers on the obverse and the national emblem on the reverse. Issuance of
10824-483: The late 1980s and early 1990s, China worked to make the renminbi more convertible. Through the use of swap centres, the exchange rate was eventually brought to more realistic levels of above ¥8/US$ 1 in 1994 and the FEC was discontinued. It stayed above ¥8/$ 1 until 2005 when the renminbi's peg to the dollar was loosened and it was allowed to appreciate. As of 2013, the renminbi is convertible on current accounts but not capital accounts . The ultimate goal has been to make
10947-488: The late Han, with its development stemming from a cursive form of neo-clerical script. Liu Desheng ( 劉德升 ; c. 147 – 188 CE) is traditionally recognized as the inventor of the semi-cursive style, though accreditations of this kind often indicate a given style's early masters, rather than its earliest practitioners. Later analysis has suggested popular origins for semi-cursive, as opposed to it being an invention of Liu. It can be characterized partly as
11070-499: The mainstream script underwent slow, gradual evolution during the late Shang, which continued during the Zhou dynasty ( c. 1046 – 256 BCE) until assuming the form now known as small seal script ( 小篆 ; xiǎozhuàn ) within the Zhou state of Qin . Other scripts in use during the late Zhou include the bird-worm seal script ( 鸟虫书 ; 鳥蟲書 ; niǎochóngshū ), as well as
11193-548: The method by which the meaning was originally depicted, phonographs that include a phonetic component, and loangraphs encompassing existing characters that have been borrowed to write other words. Qiu also acknowledges the existence of character classes that fall outside of these principles, such as pure signs. Most of the oldest characters are pictographs ( 象形 ; xiàngxíng ), representational pictures of physical objects. Examples include 日 ('Sun'), 月 ('Moon'), and 木 ('tree'). Over time,
11316-441: The nearest yuan (such as ¥9 or ¥10). In 1953, aluminium ¥0.01, ¥0.02, and ¥0.05 coins began being struck for circulation, and were first introduced in 1955. These depict the national emblem on the obverse (front) and the name and denomination framed by wheat stalks on the reverse (back). In 1980, brass ¥0.1, ¥0.2, and ¥0.5 and cupro-nickel ¥1 coins were added, although the ¥0.1 and ¥0.2 were only produced until 1981, with
11439-457: The note has a tactile representation of the denomination in Chinese Braille starting from the fourth series. See corresponding section for detailed information. The fen and jiao denominations have become increasingly unnecessary as prices have increased. Coins under ¥0.1 are used infrequently. Chinese retailers tend to avoid fractional values (such as ¥9.99), opting instead to round to
11562-628: The official currency of the United Kingdom . Jiao and fen are also units of renminbi. In everyday Mandarin , kuai (Chinese: 块 ; pinyin: kuài ; lit. 'piece') is usually used when discussing money and "renminbi" or "yuan" are rarely heard. Similarly, Mandarin speakers typically use mao (Chinese: 毛 ; pinyin: máo ) instead of jiao. For example, ¥8.74 might be read as 八块七毛四 ( pinyin : bā kuài qī máo sì ) in everyday conversation, but read 八元七角四分 ( pinyin : bā yuán qī jiǎo sì fēn ) formally. Renminbi
11685-458: The one previous, has been disproven by later scholarship and archaeological work. Instead, scripts evolved gradually, with several coexisting in a given area. Several of the Chinese classics indicate that knotted cords were used to keep records prior to the invention of writing. Works that reference the practice include chapter 80 of the Tao Te Ching and the " Xici II" commentary to
11808-405: The phonetic series of characters using 余 ( yú ; jyu4 ), a literary first-person pronoun. The Old Chinese pronunciations of these characters were similar, but the phonetic component no longer serves as a useful hint for their pronunciation due to subsequent sound shifts. The phenomenon of existing characters being adapted to write other words with similar pronunciations was necessary in
11931-428: The pictograph 大 , meaning 'large', was originally a picture of a large man, but one would need to be aware of its specific meaning in order to interpret the sequence 大鹿 as signifying 'large deer', rather than being a picture of a large man and a deer next to one another. Due to this process of abstraction, as well as to make characters easier to write, pictographs gradually became more simplified and regularized—often to
12054-489: The pictorial qualities that remained in seal script. Around the midpoint of the Eastern Han (25–220 CE), a simplified and easier form of clerical script appeared, which Qiu terms 'neo-clerical' ( 新隶体 ; 新隸體 ; xīnlìtǐ ). By the end of the Han, this had become the dominant script used by scribes, though clerical script remained in use for formal works, such as engraved stelae . Qiu describes neo-clerical as
12177-527: The primary style used for characters since. Informed by a long tradition of lexicography , states using Chinese characters have standardized their forms: broadly, simplified characters are used to write Chinese in mainland China , Singapore , and Malaysia , while traditional characters are used in Taiwan , Hong Kong , and Macau . After being introduced in order to write Literary Chinese , characters were often adapted to write local languages spoken throughout
12300-457: The promotion of small seal script by the Qin dynasty (221–206 BCE). Clerical script , which had matured by the early Han dynasty (202 BCE – 220 CE), abstracted the forms of characters—obscuring their pictographic origins in favour of making them easier to write. Following the Han, regular script emerged as the result of cursive influence on clerical script, and has been
12423-645: The proposed ‘ tokenomics ’ being considered by the DCEP working group. Some patents show plans towards programmed inflation control mechanisms. While the majority of the patents are attributed to the PBOC's Digital Currency Research Institute, some are attributed to state-owned corporations or subsidiaries of the Chinese central government. Uncovered by the Chamber of Digital Commerce (an American non-profit advocacy group), their contents shed light on Beijing's mounting efforts to digitise
12546-529: The purely pictorial use of symbols disappeared, leaving only those representing spoken words, the process was complete. Chinese characters have been used in several different writing systems throughout history. The concept of a writing system includes both the written symbols themselves, called graphemes —which may include characters, numerals, or punctuation—as well as the rules by which they are used to record language. Chinese characters are logographs , which are graphemes that represent units of meaning in
12669-525: The quantities they represent. The Shuowen Jiezi is a character dictionary authored c. 100 CE by the scholar Xu Shen ( c. 58 – c. 148 CE ). In its postface, Xu analyses what he sees as all the methods by which characters are created. Later authors iterated upon Xu's analysis, developing a categorization scheme known as the 'six writings' ( 六书 ; 六書 ; liùshū ), which identifies every character with one of six categories that had previously been mentioned in
12792-556: The real barriers to internationalisation of the renminbi are China's capital controls, which it has no plans to remove. Maximilian Kärnfelt, an expert at the Mercator Institute for China Studies , said that a digital renminbi "would not banish many of the problems holding the renminbi back from more use globally". He went on to say, "Much of China's financial market is still not open to foreigners and property rights remain fragile." The PBOC has filed more than 80 patents surrounding
12915-423: The regional forms used in non-Qin states. Examples of these styles were preserved as variants in the Shuowen Jiezi . Historically, Zhou forms were collectively referred to as large seal script ( 大篆 ; dàzhuàn ), a term which has fallen out of favour due to its lack of precision. Following Qin's conquest of the other Chinese states that culminated in the founding of the imperial Qin dynasty in 221 BCE,
13038-538: The renminbi , on 30 November 2015, the IMF voted to designate the renminbi as one of several main world currencies, thus including it in the basket of special drawing rights . The renminbi became the first emerging market currency to be included in the IMF's SDR basket on 1 October 2016. The other main world currencies are the dollar , the euro , sterling , and the yen . In October 2019, China's central bank, PBOC , announced that
13161-473: The renminbi became the first emerging market currency to be included in the IMF 's special drawing rights basket, the basket of currencies used by the IMF as a reserve currency. Its initial weighting in the basket was 10.9%. The ISO code for the renminbi is CNY , the PRC's country code (CN) plus "Y" from "yuan". Hong Kong markets that trade renminbi at free-floating rates use the unofficial code CNH . This
13284-441: The renminbi exchange rate has been allowed to float in a narrow margin around a fixed base rate determined with reference to a basket of world currencies . The Chinese government has announced that it will gradually increase the flexibility of the exchange rate. As a result of the rapid internationalization of the renminbi , it became the world's 8th most traded currency in 2013, 5th by 2015, but 6th in 2019. On 1 October 2016,
13407-450: The renminbi fully convertible. However, partly in response to the Asian financial crisis in 1998, China has been concerned that the Chinese financial system would not be able to handle the potential rapid cross-border movements of hot money , and as a result, as of 2012, the currency trades within a narrow band specified by the Chinese central government. Following the internationalization of
13530-493: The renminbi's official exchange rate was undervalued by as much as 37.5% against its purchasing power parity . However, more recently, appreciation actions by the Chinese government, as well as quantitative easing measures taken by the American Federal Reserve and other major central banks , have caused the renminbi to be within as little as 8% of its equilibrium value by the second half of 2012. Since 2006,
13653-552: The renminbi, which has sparked alarm in the West and spurred central bankers around the world to begin exploring similar projects. Some commentators have said that the U.S., which has no current plans to issue a government-backed digital currency, risks falling behind China and risking its dominance in the global financial system. Victor Shih , a China expert and professor at the University of California San Diego , said that merely introducing
13776-472: The result of clerical forms being written more quickly, without formal rules of technique or composition: what would be discrete strokes in clerical script frequently flow together instead. The semi-cursive style is commonly adopted in contemporary handwriting. Regular script ( 楷书 ; 楷書 ; kǎishū ), based on clerical and semi-cursive forms, is the predominant form in which characters are written and printed. Its innovations have traditionally been credited to
13899-534: The right. It developed further during the Eastern Jin (317–420) in the hands of Wang Xizhi and his son Wang Xianzhi (344–386). However, most Jin-era writers continued to use neo-clerical and semi-cursive styles in their daily writing. It was not until the Northern and Southern period (420–589) that regular script became the predominant form. The system of imperial examinations for the civil service established during
14022-426: The same character—is often non-trivial or unclear. For example, prior to the Qin dynasty the character meaning 'bright' was written as either 明 or 朙 —with either ⽇ 'SUN' or 囧 'WINDOW' on the left, and ⽉ 'MOON' on the right. As part of the Qin programme to standardize small seal script across China, the 朙 form was promoted. Some scribes ignored this, and continued to write
14145-414: The spoken language. Some characters may only have the same initial or final sound of a syllable in common with phonetic components. A phonetic series comprises all the characters created using the same phonetic component, which may have diverged significantly in their pronunciations over time. For example, 茶 ( chá ; caa4 ; 'tea') and 途 ( tú ; tou4 ; 'route') are part of
14268-475: The use of a dual exchange rate system, and the introduction and gradual expansion of markets for foreign exchange. The most important move to a market-oriented exchange rate was an easing of controls on trade and other current account transactions, as occurred in several very early steps. In 1979, the State Council approved a system allowing exporters and their provincial and local government owners to retain
14391-579: The wars of unification. The popularity of this form grew as writing became more widespread. By the Warring States period ( c. 475 – 221 BCE), an immature form of clerical script ( 隶书 ; 隸書 ; lìshū ) had emerged based on the vulgar form developed within Qin, often called "early clerical" or "proto-clerical". The proto-clerical script evolved gradually; by the Han dynasty (202 BCE – 220 CE), it had arrived at
14514-437: The ¥20 notes (added in 1999 with the fifth series) ¥50 and ¥100 notes (added in 1987 with the fourth series). Coins are available in denominations from ¥0.01 to ¥1 (¥0.01–1). Thus some denominations exist in both coins and banknotes. On rare occasions, larger yuan coin denominations such as ¥5 have been issued to commemorate events but use of these outside of collecting has never been widespread. The denomination of each banknote
14637-488: Was a devaluation of almost 100%. In the process of opening up China to external trade and tourism, transactions with foreign visitors between 1980 and 1994 were done primarily using Foreign exchange certificates ( 外汇券 , waihuiquan ) issued by the Bank of China . Foreign currencies were exchangeable for FECs and vice versa at the renminbi's prevailing official rate which ranged from US$ 1 = ¥2.8 FEC to ¥5.5 FEC. The FEC
14760-421: Was also loosened and capital inflows to China surged. During the era of the command economy , the value of the renminbi was set to unrealistic values in exchange with Western currency and severe currency exchange rules were put in place, hence the dual-track currency system from 1980 to 1994 with the renminbi usable only domestically, and with Foreign Exchange Certificates (FECs) used by foreign visitors. In
14883-596: Was issued as banknotes from ¥0.1 to ¥100, and was officially at par with the renminbi. Tourists used FECs to pay for accommodation as well as tourist and luxury goods sold in Friendship Stores . However, given the non-availability of foreign exchange and Friendship Store goods to the general public, as well as the inability of tourists to use FECs at local businesses, an illegal black market developed for FECs where touts approached tourists outside hotels and offered over ¥1.50 RMB in exchange for ¥1 FEC. In 1994, as
15006-740: Was significantly reduced in size, and in 2005 its composition was changed from aluminium to more durable nickel-plated steel. An updated version of these coins was announced in 2019. While the overall design is unchanged, all coins including the ¥0.5 are now of nickel-plated steel, and the ¥1 coin was reduced in size. The frequency of usage of coins varies between different parts of China, with coins typically being more popular in urban areas (with 5-jiǎo and 1-yuán coins used in vending machines), and small notes being more popular in rural areas. Older fēn and large jiǎo coins are uncommonly still seen in circulation, but are still valid in exchange. As of 2023, there have been five series of renminbi banknotes issued by
15129-415: Was the silver dragon dollar introduced in 1889. Various banknotes denominated in dollars or yuan were also introduced, which were convertible to silver dollars until 1935 when the silver standard was discontinued and the Chinese yuan was made fabi ( 法币 ; legal tender fiat currency ). The renminbi was introduced by the People's Bank of China in December 1948, about a year before the establishment of
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