China Inflation Calculator

Buying power of ¥100 in 1997

This chart shows a calculation of buying power equivalence for ¥100 in 1997 (price index tracking began in 1986).

For example, if you started with ¥100, you would need to end with ¥156.86 in order to "adjust" for inflation (sometimes refered to as "beating inflation").

When ¥100 is equivalent to ¥156.86 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 1997 dollars, the chart below shows how ¥100 is worth less over 24 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 1997 amounts in 2021 renminbi, based on the 56.86% change in prices:

How to calculate inflation rate for ¥100, 1997 to 2021

Our calculations use the following inflation rate formula to calculate the change in value between 1997 and 2021:

Then plug in historical CPI values. The Chinese CPI was 71.76509 in the year 1997 and 112.5686 in 2021:

¥100 in 1997 has the same "purchasing power" or "buying power" as ¥156.86 in 2021.

To get the total inflation rate for the 24 years between 1997 and 2021, we use the following formula:

Plugging in the values to this equation, we get:

Data source & citation

» Read more about inflation and investment.