Chinese Yuan (CNY) Data Coverage: Indicators, Sources and Release Times

Quick answer

FXMacroData serves 23 Chinese yuan (CNY) series from the production catalogue. They come from the People's Bank of China (PBoC), the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS), the State Administration of Foreign Exchange (SAFE), ChinaBond (China Central Depository and Clearing) for government bond yields, and the Bank for International Settlements for the trade-weighted index.

Coverage spans the Loan Prime Rate and 7-day reverse repo rate, the China government bond curve, CPI, core CPI and PPI, GDP, the NBS manufacturing PMI, retail sales, urban unemployment, M1 and M2, the PBoC balance sheet, FX and gold reserves, and the current account. These are the releases that set the tone for USD/CNY and, through China's weight in global trade, for AUD, NZD and commodity currencies.

This guide covers the onshore yuan. The offshore yuan, CNH, has its own catalogue code that carries the same mainland statistics; see the CNH data coverage guide for how the two differ.

Who publishes Chinese yuan data

People's Bank of China. The PBoC publishes the Loan Prime Rate (quoted monthly by panel banks under PBoC guidance), its 7-day reverse repo rate, monetary aggregates and the monetary authority balance sheet. It also sets the daily USD/CNY central parity, which anchors onshore trading.

National Bureau of Statistics. The NBS publishes CPI, core CPI and PPI, quarterly GDP, the official manufacturing PMI, retail sales and the surveyed urban unemployment rate.

State Administration of Foreign Exchange. SAFE publishes China's official foreign exchange reserves, gold reserves and the balance of payments, including the current account.

ChinaBond and BIS. Government bond yields are the ChinaBond (CCDC) yield curve. The trade-weighted index is the BIS nominal effective exchange rate (broad basket, 2020=100), not the CFETS RMB index.

Each release is stored with an announcement_datetime, and new releases typically reach the API within seconds of official publication (see release speed).

CNY indicators covered

Every series below is in the production catalogue at /v1/data_catalogue/cny. The slug in brackets is the indicator value used in API calls.

Policy and rates

• 1-year Loan Prime Rate (policy_rate): the benchmark lending rate, published on the 20th of each month, from the August 2019 reform onwards. Changes usually follow a move in the PBoC's 7-day reverse repo rate.
• 7-day reverse repo rate (risk_free_rate): the PBoC's main short-term policy rate. The catalogue's daily history for this series begins in June 2026.
• China government bond yields (1-year, 2-year, 3-year, 5-year, 7-year, 10-year, 30-year): daily ChinaBond yields. The gap between the China and US 10-year yields is a key driver of capital flows and of pressure on the yuan.

Inflation

• CPI inflation (inflation): year-on-year CPI from the NBS, with history from 1998.
• Core CPI (core_inflation): CPI excluding food and energy. The catalogue's history for this series currently starts in October 2025.
• PPI (ppi): year-on-year producer prices for industrial products, from 1993. Chinese PPI is closely watched abroad because it feeds into the prices of goods China exports.

Growth and activity

• GDP (gdp): quarterly GDP at current prices in CNY billion (the quarterly value, not the year-to-date total).
• NBS manufacturing PMI (business_confidence): the official purchasing managers' index, published on the last day of the reference month, so it is the first hard read on each month. 50 separates expansion from contraction.
• Retail sales (retail_sales): year-on-year growth in retail sales of consumer goods. The catalogue's history for this series currently starts in October 2025.

Labour market

• Surveyed urban unemployment rate (unemployment): the monthly national rate, published since January 2018.

External accounts and reserves

• Current account balance (current_account_balance): quarterly, in USD billion, from SAFE's balance of payments.
• Foreign exchange reserves (foreign_reserves): monthly, in USD billion. Changes mix valuation effects with flows, so they are read as an indirect signal of intervention.
• Gold reserves (gold_reserves): monthly official gold holdings, in USD billion.
• Trade-weighted index (BIS NEER) (trade_weighted_index): monthly nominal effective exchange rate, which shows yuan strength against the whole basket rather than just the dollar.

Money and credit

• Money supply (M1, M2): monthly, in CNY trillion. The PBoC widened the M1 definition from January 2025, so the level steps up at that point and earlier figures are not directly comparable.
• PBoC total assets (cb_assets): monthly monetary authority balance sheet, in CNY trillion.

CNY release timing

China does not use daylight saving, so Beijing time (Asia/Shanghai) is UTC+8 all year and the UTC times below are fixed. Most NBS data arrive at 09:30 or 10:00, just before or after the onshore market opens.

The PBoC also publishes the USD/CNY central parity at 09:15 Beijing time each trading day; that fixing is not an economic release but it frames how onshore trading reacts to the data. Upcoming dates are on the release calendar.

Worked example: the September 2026 manufacturing PMI

The NBS published the September 2026 manufacturing PMI on Wednesday 30 September 2026 at 09:30 Beijing time. This request returns it:

curl -H "X-API-Key: YOUR_API_KEY" "https://api.fxmacrodata.com/v1/announcements/cny/business_confidence?start_date=2026-09-01"

The newest row in the response (abridged to the core fields):

{
  "date": "2026-09-30",
  "val": 50.1,
  "announcement_datetime": 1790731800,
  "previous_value": 49.8,
  "previous_date": "2026-08-31"
}

val is a PMI of 50.1, back above the 50 line after 49.8 in August, and announcement_datetime 1790731800 is 01:30:00 UTC, or 09:30 in Beijing. Because the NBS publishes the PMI on the last day of the month it describes, the date and the release day are the same; it is one of the few series where the announcement falls on the period end rather than after it.

How traders use CNY data

Policy easing signals

Track the 7-day reverse repo rate and the 1-year LPR together. A cut in the reverse repo rate usually leads the LPR by days or weeks; a combined move, especially alongside weak PMI or CPI, tends to weigh on the yuan through a wider rate gap with the US.

China-US yield spread

Subtract the US 10-year from the China 10-year yield. A deeply negative spread encourages capital outflows and puts upward pressure on USD/CNY; watch whether the PBoC leans against that through the daily fixing and reserves.

Deflation watch

CPI, core CPI and PPI show whether China is exporting disinflation. Negative PPI often coincides with weaker export prices, which matters for trading partners' inflation and for commodity currencies.

PMI as the first read on the month

The NBS PMI lands before almost any other monthly data for the same month. AUD/USD and NZD/USD often move on the release alongside USD/CNH, because China is the largest buyer of Australian and New Zealand exports.

Reserves and intervention

Monthly FX reserves, read against the trade-weighted index, help separate valuation changes from actual intervention. Stable reserves during a yuan sell-off suggest the PBoC is relying on the fixing rather than spot sales.

Related pages

• People's Bank of China guide: LPR, reverse repo and CNY
• Offshore yuan (CNH) data coverage guide
• USD/CNY dashboard
• Release calendar
• FXMacroData data coverage across all 22 currencies