China Inflation Calculator

Buying power of ¥100 in 1986

This chart shows a calculation of buying power equivalence for ¥100 in 1986 (price index tracking began in 1986).

For example, if you started with ¥100, you would need to end with ¥505.91 in order to "adjust" for inflation (sometimes refered to as "beating inflation").

When ¥100 is equivalent to ¥505.91 over time, that means that the "real value" of a single Chinese renminbi decreases over time. In other words, a renminbi will pay for fewer items at the store.

This effect explains how inflation erodes the value of a renminbi over time. By calculating the value in 1986 dollars, the chart below shows how ¥100 is worth less over 38 years.

According to the OECD and the World Bank, each of these CNY amounts below is equal in terms of what it could buy at the time:

This conversion table shows various other 1986 amounts in today's renminbi, based on the 405.91% change in prices:

How to calculate inflation rate for ¥100 since 1986

Our calculations use the following inflation rate formula to calculate the change in value between 1986 and today:

Then plug in historical CPI values. The Chinese CPI was 22.66606332395398 in the year 1986 and 114.66939999999998 in 2024:

¥100 in 1986 has the same "purchasing power" or "buying power" as ¥505.91 in 2024.

To get the total inflation rate for the 38 years between 1986 and 2024, we use the following formula:

Plugging in the values to this equation, we get:

Data source & citation

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