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118-444: In Chinese language , the company was nicknamed as " A flower of Jiangnan ". Ma Steel Group, as a steel plant, was founded in 1953 as "Maanshan Iron Mining Plant" ( Chinese : 马鞍山铁厂 ; lit. 'Ma'anshan iron plant') in the city named 马鞍山 which means "horse saddle hill". In 1958, it was renamed to "Maanshan Iron and Steel Company", ( Chinese : 马鞍山钢铁公司 or transliterated as "Maanshan Iron and Steel Corporation"). In

236-419: 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

354-714: 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

472-547: A family . Investigation of the historical relationships among the varieties of Chinese is ongoing. Currently, most classifications posit 7 to 13 main regional groups based on phonetic developments from Middle Chinese , of which the most spoken by far is Mandarin with 66%, or around 800 million speakers, followed by Min (75 million, e.g. Southern Min ), Wu (74 million, e.g. Shanghainese ), and Yue (68 million, e.g. Cantonese ). These branches are unintelligible to each other, and many of their subgroups are unintelligible with

590-469: A nucleus that has a vowel (which can be a monophthong , diphthong , or even a triphthong in certain varieties), preceded by an onset (a single consonant , or consonant + glide ; a zero onset is also possible), and followed (optionally) by a coda consonant; a syllable also carries a tone . There are some instances where a vowel is not used as a nucleus. An example of this is in Cantonese, where

708-409: A property development division. In 2012, the public relation division of the group had told the journalist that the real estates were for the employees of the group, and not-for-sale to the general public. However, some of the fellow steel producers were selling their developed property to the general public. Nevertheless, Masteel Group purchased a land in 2009, but sold the land and the properties that

826-424: 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

944-457: A subject–verb–object word order , and like many other languages of East Asia, makes frequent use of the topic–comment construction to form sentences. Chinese also has an extensive system of classifiers and measure words , another trait shared with neighboring languages such as Japanese and Korean. Other notable grammatical features common to all the spoken varieties of Chinese include the use of serial verb construction , pronoun dropping , and

1062-510: A Chinese character is the morpheme, as characters represent the smallest grammatical units with individual meanings in the Chinese language. Estimates of the total number of Chinese words and lexicalized phrases vary greatly. The Hanyu Da Zidian , a compendium of Chinese characters, includes 54,678 head entries for characters, including oracle bone versions. The Zhonghua Zihai (1994) contains 85,568 head entries for character definitions and

1180-599: A Shanghai resident may speak both Standard Chinese and Shanghainese ; if they grew up elsewhere, they are also likely fluent in the dialect of their home region. In addition to Standard Chinese, a majority of Taiwanese people also speak Taiwanese Hokkien (also called 台語 ; 'Taiwanese' ), Hakka , or an Austronesian language . A speaker in Taiwan may mix pronunciations and vocabulary from Standard Chinese and other languages of Taiwan in everyday speech. In part due to traditional cultural ties with Guangdong , Cantonese

1298-462: A central variety (i.e. prestige variety, such as Standard Mandarin), as the issue requires some careful handling when mutual intelligibility is inconsistent with language identity. The Chinese government's official Chinese designation for the major branches of Chinese is 方言 ; fāngyán ; 'regional speech', whereas the more closely related varieties within these are called 地点方言 ; 地點方言 ; dìdiǎn fāngyán ; 'local speech'. Because of

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1416-615: A compromise between the pronunciations of different regions. The royal courts of the Ming and early Qing dynasties operated using a koiné language known as Guanhua , based on the Nanjing dialect of Mandarin. Standard Chinese is an official language of both the People's Republic of China and the Republic of China (Taiwan), one of the four official languages of Singapore , and one of

1534-714: A corresponding increase in the number of homophones . As an example, the small Langenscheidt Pocket Chinese Dictionary lists six words that are commonly pronounced as shí in Standard Chinese: In modern spoken Mandarin, however, tremendous ambiguity would result if all of these words could be used as-is. The 20th century Yuen Ren Chao poem Lion-Eating Poet in the Stone Den exploits this, consisting of 92 characters all pronounced shi . As such, most of these words have been replaced in speech, if not in writing, with less ambiguous disyllabic compounds. Only

1652-601: 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

1770-503: 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

1888-403: 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)

2006-576: A millennium. The Four Commanderies of Han were established in northern Korea in the 1st century BCE but disintegrated in the following centuries. Chinese Buddhism spread over East Asia between the 2nd and 5th centuries CE, and with it the study of scriptures and literature in Literary Chinese. Later, strong central governments modeled on Chinese institutions were established in Korea, Japan, and Vietnam, with Literary Chinese serving as

2124-681: 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

2242-542: A secure reconstruction of Proto-Sino-Tibetan, the higher-level structure of the family remains unclear. A top-level branching into Chinese and Tibeto-Burman languages is often assumed, but has not been convincingly demonstrated. The first written records appeared over 3,000 years ago during the Shang dynasty . As the language evolved over this period, the various local varieties became mutually unintelligible. In reaction, central governments have repeatedly sought to promulgate

2360-424: 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

2478-508: A similar way to the use of Latin and Ancient Greek roots in European languages. Many new compounds, or new meanings for old phrases, were created in the late 19th and early 20th centuries to name Western concepts and artifacts. These coinages, written in shared Chinese characters, have then been borrowed freely between languages. They have even been accepted into Chinese, a language usually resistant to loanwords, because their foreign origin

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2596-631: A unified standard. The earliest examples of Old Chinese are divinatory inscriptions on oracle bones dated to c.  1250 BCE , during the Late Shang . The next attested stage came from inscriptions on bronze artifacts dating to the Western Zhou period (1046–771 BCE), the Classic of Poetry and portions of the Book of Documents and I Ching . Scholars have attempted to reconstruct

2714-575: A variety of Yue from a small coastal area around Taishan, Guangdong . In parts of South China, the dialect of a major city may be only marginally intelligible to its neighbors. For example, Wuzhou and Taishan are located approximately 260 km (160 mi) and 190 km (120 mi) away from Guangzhou respectively, but the Yue variety spoken in Wuzhou is more similar to the Guangzhou dialect than

2832-602: Is Taishanese. Wuzhou is located directly upstream from Guangzhou on the Pearl River , whereas Taishan is to Guangzhou's southwest, with the two cities separated by several river valleys. In parts of Fujian , the speech of some neighbouring counties or villages is mutually unintelligible. Local varieties of Chinese are conventionally classified into seven dialect groups, largely based on the different evolution of Middle Chinese voiced initials: Proportions of first-language speakers The classification of Li Rong , which

2950-490: Is called either 华语 ; 華語 ; Huáyǔ or 汉语 ; 漢語 ; Hànyǔ ). Standard Chinese is based on the Beijing dialect of Mandarin. The governments of both China and Taiwan intend for speakers of all Chinese speech varieties to use it as a common language of communication. Therefore, it is used in government agencies, in the media, and as a language of instruction in schools. Diglossia is common among Chinese speakers. For example,

3068-544: 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

3186-603: Is often described as a 'monosyllabic' language. However, this is only partially correct. It is largely accurate when describing Old and Middle Chinese; in Classical Chinese, around 90% of words consist of a single character that corresponds one-to-one with a morpheme , the smallest unit of meaning in a language. In modern varieties, it usually remains the case that morphemes are monosyllabic—in contrast, English has many multi-syllable morphemes, both bound and free , such as 'seven', 'elephant', 'para-' and '-able'. Some of

3304-445: Is only about an eighth as many as English. All varieties of spoken Chinese use tones to distinguish words. A few dialects of north China may have as few as three tones, while some dialects in south China have up to 6 or 12 tones, depending on how one counts. One exception from this is Shanghainese which has reduced the set of tones to a two-toned pitch accent system much like modern Japanese. A very common example used to illustrate

3422-522: 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

3540-575: 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)

3658-668: Is specifically meant. However, when one of the above words forms part of a compound, the disambiguating syllable is generally dropped and the resulting word is still disyllabic. For example, 石 ; shí alone, and not 石头 ; 石頭 ; shítou , appears in compounds as meaning 'stone' such as 石膏 ; shígāo ; 'plaster', 石灰 ; shíhuī ; 'lime', 石窟 ; shíkū ; 'grotto', 石英 ; 'quartz', and 石油 ; shíyóu ; 'petroleum'. Although many single-syllable morphemes ( 字 ; zì ) can stand alone as individual words, they more often than not form multi-syllable compounds known as 词 ; 詞 ; cí , which more closely resembles

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3776-489: Is the largest reference work based purely on character and its literary variants. The CC-CEDICT project (2010) contains 97,404 contemporary entries including idioms, technology terms, and names of political figures, businesses, and products. The 2009 version of the Webster's Digital Chinese Dictionary (WDCD), based on CC-CEDICT, contains over 84,000 entries. The most comprehensive pure linguistic Chinese-language dictionary,

3894-475: 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,

4012-501: Is used as an everyday language in Hong Kong and Macau . The designation of various Chinese branches remains controversial. Some linguists and most ordinary Chinese people consider all the spoken varieties as one single language, as speakers share a common national identity and a common written form. Others instead argue that it is inappropriate to refer to major branches of Chinese such as Mandarin, Wu, and so on as "dialects" because

4130-500: Is used in education, media, formal speech, and everyday life—though Mandarin is increasingly taught in schools due to the mainland's growing influence. Historically, the Chinese language has spread to its neighbors through a variety of means. Northern Vietnam was incorporated into the Han dynasty (202 BCE – 220 CE) in 111 BCE, marking the beginning of a period of Chinese control that ran almost continuously for

4248-552: Is used in the Language Atlas of China (1987), distinguishes three further groups: Some varieties remain unclassified, including the Danzhou dialect on Hainan , Waxianghua spoken in western Hunan , and Shaozhou Tuhua spoken in northern Guangdong . Standard Chinese is the standard language of China (where it is called 普通话 ; pǔtōnghuà ) and Taiwan, and one of the four official languages of Singapore (where it

4366-428: Is very complex, with a large number of consonants and vowels, but they are probably not all distinguished in any single dialect. Most linguists now believe it represents a diasystem encompassing 6th-century northern and southern standards for reading the classics. The complex relationship between spoken and written Chinese is an example of diglossia : as spoken, Chinese varieties have evolved at different rates, while

4484-466: 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

4602-753: The Qieyun rime dictionary (601 CE), and a late period in the 10th century, reflected by rhyme tables such as the Yunjing constructed by ancient Chinese philologists as a guide to the Qieyun system. These works define phonological categories but with little hint of what sounds they represent. Linguists have identified these sounds by comparing the categories with pronunciations in modern varieties of Chinese , borrowed Chinese words in Japanese, Vietnamese, and Korean, and transcription evidence. The resulting system

4720-941: 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

4838-476: 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

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4956-572: The Chinese diaspora . Approximately 1.35 billion people, or 17% of the global population, speak a variety of Chinese as their first language . Chinese languages form the Sinitic branch of the Sino-Tibetan language family. The spoken varieties of Chinese are usually considered by native speakers to be dialects of a single language. However, their lack of mutual intelligibility means they are sometimes considered to be separate languages in

5074-409: 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

5192-533: The Korean , Japanese and Vietnamese languages, and today comprise over half of their vocabularies. This massive influx led to changes in the phonological structure of the languages, contributing to the development of moraic structure in Japanese and the disruption of vowel harmony in Korean. Borrowed Chinese morphemes have been used extensively in all these languages to coin compound words for new concepts, in

5310-710: The May Fourth Movement beginning in 1919. After the fall of the Northern Song dynasty and subsequent reign of the Jurchen Jin and Mongol Yuan dynasties in northern China, a common speech (now called Old Mandarin ) developed based on the dialects of the North China Plain around the capital. The 1324 Zhongyuan Yinyun was a dictionary that codified the rhyming conventions of new sanqu verse form in this language. Together with

5428-595: The National Language Unification Commission finally settled on the Beijing dialect in 1932. The People's Republic founded in 1949 retained this standard but renamed it 普通话 ; 普通話 ; pǔtōnghuà ; 'common speech'. The national language is now used in education, the media, and formal situations in both mainland China and Taiwan. In Hong Kong and Macau , Cantonese is the dominant spoken language due to cultural influence from Guangdong immigrants and colonial-era policies, and

5546-478: The oracle bone inscriptions created during the Shang dynasty c.  1250 BCE . The phonetic categories of Old Chinese can be reconstructed from the rhymes of ancient poetry. During the Northern and Southern period , Middle Chinese went through several sound changes and split into several varieties following prolonged geographic and political separation. The Qieyun , a rime dictionary , recorded

5664-596: The phonology of Old Chinese by comparing later varieties of Chinese with the rhyming practice of the Classic of Poetry and the phonetic elements found in the majority of Chinese characters. Although many of the finer details remain unclear, most scholars agree that Old Chinese differs from Middle Chinese in lacking retroflex and palatal obstruents but having initial consonant clusters of some sort, and in having voiceless nasals and liquids. Most recent reconstructions also describe an atonal language with consonant clusters at

5782-802: The 12-volume Hanyu Da Cidian , records more than 23,000 head Chinese characters and gives over 370,000 definitions. The 1999 revised Cihai , a multi-volume encyclopedic dictionary reference work, gives 122,836 vocabulary entry definitions under 19,485 Chinese characters, including proper names, phrases, and common zoological, geographical, sociological, scientific, and technical terms. The 2016 edition of Xiandai Hanyu Cidian , an authoritative one-volume dictionary on modern standard Chinese language as used in mainland China, has 13,000 head characters and defines 70,000 words. Renminbi The renminbi ( Chinese : 人民币 ; pinyin : Rénmínbì ; lit. 'People's Currency'; symbol : ¥ ; ISO code : CNY ; abbreviation : RMB ), also known as

5900-437: The 1950s, it was considered as one of the 5 medium-sized steel plants of the People's Republic of China, behind the top 3 at that time: Anshan , Wuhan and Baotou . According to the company, the steel plant was the first Chinese manufacturer of train wheel and tires , which was first produced in 1962. As of 1993, the train wheel and tire production lines of the group were unique ( Chinese : 唯一 ) [ sic ] in

6018-468: The 1980s to 1990s, 85% of the tax revenue of the Ma'anshan city, were contributed by the group. The group also employed 90,000 out of 2 million citizens at its peak. In 1993, a subsidiary was incorporated as Maanshan Iron and Steel Company Limited ( Chinese : 马鞍山钢铁股份有限公司 ), which the original "Ma'anshan Iron and Steel Company" was renamed to "Magang Holding Company" ( Chinese : 马钢总公司 ). The former

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6136-720: 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

6254-503: 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

6372-565: The Latin-based Vietnamese alphabet . English words of Chinese origin include tea from Hokkien 茶 ( tê ), dim sum from Cantonese 點心 ( dim2 sam1 ), and kumquat from Cantonese 金橘 ( gam1 gwat1 ). The sinologist Jerry Norman has estimated that there are hundreds of mutually unintelligible varieties of Chinese. These varieties form a dialect continuum , in which differences in speech generally become more pronounced as distances increase, though

6490-402: The People's Republic of China to be a listed company. It was also the largest H shares initial public offering at that time. After the split, Masteel Group had transformed into a holding company which owns the controlling stake of the listed company, as well as other auxiliary divisions such as education, hospitals and mining. According to news report, the unlisted portion of the group also had

6608-474: The People's Republic of China. In 1970, a limestone mine located in Chuanshan, Zhenjiang city, was under the administration of the group. However, after the establishment of Shanghai Baoshan Iron and Steel , the mine became a supplier of Baoshan Iron & Steel instead. The administration of the mine was also transferred to the metallurgical bureau of Zhenjiang city. According to Financial Times , in

6726-529: 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

6844-412: 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

6962-491: The State-owned Assets Supervision and Administration Commission (SASAC) of Anhui Provincial People's Government  [ zh ] for free. The acquisition also included the indirect controlling stake (45.54%) of the list subsidiary Maanshan Iron and Steel Co., Ltd. Baowu was owned by Central Government (The State Council)'s SASAC. According to World Steel Association , China Baowu Steel Group

7080-462: 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

7198-496: 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

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7316-447: The date of the news article was written (circa 2018), the subsidiary had planted 12,000 trees, as well as a capital investment of more than CN¥7 million. The subsidiary was established in 2011 by merging subsidiaries and divisions into one subsidiary; The mining subsidiary owned 5 mines, namely: 南山矿 , 姑山矿 , 桃冲矿 , 罗河矿 and 张庄矿 . In mid-2019, central government owned China Baowu Steel Group acquired 51% stake of Masteel Group from

7434-399: The different spoken dialects varies, but in general, there has been a tendency to a reduction in sounds from Middle Chinese. The Mandarin dialects in particular have experienced a dramatic decrease in sounds and so have far more polysyllabic words than most other spoken varieties. The total number of syllables in some varieties is therefore only about a thousand, including tonal variation, which

7552-484: The difficulties involved in determining the difference between language and dialect, other terms have been proposed. These include topolect , lect , vernacular , regional , and variety . Syllables in the Chinese languages have some unique characteristics. They are tightly related to the morphology and also to the characters of the writing system, and phonologically they are structured according to fixed rules. The structure of each syllable consists of

7670-833: 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

7788-576: The end of the syllable, developing into tone distinctions in Middle Chinese. Several derivational affixes have also been identified, but the language lacks inflection , and indicated grammatical relationships using word order and grammatical particles . Middle Chinese was the language used during Northern and Southern dynasties and the Sui , Tang , and Song dynasties (6th–10th centuries CE). It can be divided into an early period, reflected by

7906-491: The establishment of the listed subsidiary in 1993, the Masteel Group and the listed subsidiary formed a joint venture in trading scarp steel in 2012, which Masteel Group owned 55% stake of the joint venture, while the listed subsidiary owned 45% stake. In 2019, a CN¥300 million capital increase of the scarp steel trading joint venture was announced. In terms of assets, as at 31 December 2015, Masteel Group, including

8024-539: 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

8142-413: The first one, 十 , normally appears in monosyllabic form in spoken Mandarin; the rest are normally used in the polysyllabic forms of respectively. In each, the homophone was disambiguated by the addition of another morpheme, typically either a near-synonym or some sort of generic word (e.g. 'head', 'thing'), the purpose of which is to indicate which of the possible meanings of the other, homophonic syllable

8260-491: The form of a word), to indicate a word's function within a sentence. In other words, Chinese has very few grammatical inflections —it possesses no tenses , no voices , no grammatical number , and only a few articles . They make heavy use of grammatical particles to indicate aspect and mood . In Mandarin, this involves the use of particles such as 了 ; le ; ' PFV ', 还 ; 還 ; hái ; 'still', and 已经 ; 已經 ; yǐjīng ; 'already'. Chinese has

8378-565: The government of the People's Republic of China, with Singapore officially adopting them in 1976. Traditional characters are used in Taiwan, Hong Kong, Macau, and among Chinese-speaking communities overseas . Linguists classify all varieties of Chinese as part of the Sino-Tibetan language family , together with Burmese , Tibetan and many other languages spoken in the Himalayas and the Southeast Asian Massif . Although

8496-413: 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,

8614-538: The indirect subsidiary Maanshan Iron and Steel Co., Ltd., the steel production entity of Masteel Group. Chinese language Chinese ( simplified Chinese : 汉语 ; traditional Chinese : 漢語 ; pinyin : Hànyǔ ; lit. ' Han language' or 中文 ; Zhōngwén ; 'Chinese writing') is a group of languages spoken natively by the ethnic Han Chinese majority and many minority ethnic groups in China , as well as by various communities of

8732-526: 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

8850-586: The language of administration and scholarship, a position it would retain until the late 19th century in Korea and (to a lesser extent) Japan, and the early 20th century in Vietnam. Scholars from different lands could communicate, albeit only in writing, using Literary Chinese. Although they used Chinese solely for written communication, each country had its own tradition of reading texts aloud using what are known as Sino-Xenic pronunciations . Chinese words with these pronunciations were also extensively imported into

8968-435: 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

9086-464: 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

9204-483: 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

9322-528: The late 19th century. Today Japanese is written with a composite script using both Chinese characters called kanji , and kana. Korean is written exclusively with hangul in North Korea, although knowledge of the supplementary Chinese characters called hanja is still required, and hanja are increasingly rarely used in South Korea. As a result of its historical colonization by France, Vietnamese now uses

9440-401: The listed subsidiary, owned CN¥ 82.276  billion of total assets in consolidated financial statement in the Chinese accounting standards . In the same reporting period, the listed subsidiary owned CN¥62.454 billion. According to a news report, the mining subsidiary of Masteel Group ( Chinese : 马钢集团矿业有限公司 ) had significantly invested in mine rehabilitation , which from 2014 to

9558-455: The more conservative modern varieties, usually found in the south, have largely monosyllabic words , especially with basic vocabulary. However, most nouns, adjectives, and verbs in modern Mandarin are disyllabic. A significant cause of this is phonetic erosion : sound changes over time have steadily reduced the number of possible syllables in the language's inventory. In modern Mandarin, there are only around 1,200 possible syllables, including

9676-425: The mutual unintelligibility between them is too great. However, calling major Chinese branches "languages" would also be wrong under the same criterion, since a branch such as Wu, itself contains many mutually unintelligible varieties, and could not be properly called a single language. There are also viewpoints pointing out that linguists often ignore mutual intelligibility when varieties share intelligibility with

9794-583: The nasal sonorant consonants /m/ and /ŋ/ can stand alone as their own syllable. In Mandarin much more than in other spoken varieties, most syllables tend to be open syllables, meaning they have no coda (assuming that a final glide is not analyzed as a coda), but syllables that do have codas are restricted to nasals /m/ , /n/ , /ŋ/ , the retroflex approximant /ɻ/ , and voiceless stops /p/ , /t/ , /k/ , or /ʔ/ . Some varieties allow most of these codas, whereas others, such as Standard Chinese, are limited to only /n/ , /ŋ/ , and /ɻ/ . The number of sounds in

9912-441: 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

10030-464: 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

10148-635: 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

10266-538: The other varieties within the same branch (e.g. Southern Min). There are, however, transitional areas where varieties from different branches share enough features for some limited intelligibility, including New Xiang with Southwestern Mandarin , Xuanzhou Wu Chinese with Lower Yangtze Mandarin , Jin with Central Plains Mandarin and certain divergent dialects of Hakka with Gan . All varieties of Chinese are tonal at least to some degree, and are largely analytic . The earliest attested written Chinese consists of

10384-658: 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

10502-404: The rate of change varies immensely. Generally, mountainous South China exhibits more linguistic diversity than the North China Plain . Until the late 20th century, Chinese emigrants to Southeast Asia and North America came from southeast coastal areas, where Min, Hakka, and Yue dialects were spoken. Specifically, most Chinese immigrants to North America until the mid-20th century spoke Taishanese ,

10620-564: 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

10738-552: The related subject dropping . Although the grammars of the spoken varieties share many traits, they do possess differences. The entire Chinese character corpus since antiquity comprises well over 50,000 characters, of which only roughly 10,000 are in use and only about 3,000 are frequently used in Chinese media and newspapers. However, Chinese characters should not be confused with Chinese words. Because most Chinese words are made up of two or more characters, there are many more Chinese words than characters. A more accurate equivalent for

10856-509: The relationship was first proposed in the early 19th century and is now broadly accepted, reconstruction of Sino-Tibetan is much less developed than that of families such as Indo-European or Austroasiatic . Difficulties have included the great diversity of the languages, the lack of inflection in many of them, and the effects of language contact. In addition, many of the smaller languages are spoken in mountainous areas that are difficult to reach and are often also sensitive border zones. Without

10974-408: The relevant provincial authority. In 2005, the hospital of the group was sold to the employees of the hospital, with the group retained 27.79% shares. Hengkang Medical Group ( Chinese : 恒康医疗 ), a listed company, was attempted to purchase the hospital from the new owners in 2018. As of 2018, Masteel Group still owned 6.48% shares of the hospital. After not involving in steel business directly since

11092-544: 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

11210-476: 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

11328-441: 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,

11446-454: 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

11564-503: 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,

11682-562: 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

11800-463: The six official languages of the United Nations . Standard Chinese is based on the Beijing dialect of Mandarin and was first officially adopted in the 1930s. The language is written primarily using a logography of Chinese characters , largely shared by readers who may otherwise speak mutually unintelligible varieties. Since the 1950s, the use of simplified characters has been promoted by

11918-561: The slightly later Menggu Ziyun , this dictionary describes a language with many of the features characteristic of modern Mandarin dialects. Up to the early 20th century, most Chinese people only spoke their local variety. Thus, as a practical measure, officials of the Ming and Qing dynasties carried out the administration of the empire using a common language based on Mandarin varieties , known as 官话 ; 官話 ; Guānhuà ; 'language of officials'. For most of this period, this language

12036-623: The tonal distinctions, compared with about 5,000 in Vietnamese (still a largely monosyllabic language), and over 8,000 in English. Most modern varieties tend to form new words through polysyllabic compounds . In some cases, monosyllabic words have become disyllabic formed from different characters without the use of compounding, as in 窟窿 ; kūlong from 孔 ; kǒng ; this is especially common in Jin varieties. This phonological collapse has led to

12154-547: The traditional Western notion of a word. A Chinese cí can consist of more than one character–morpheme, usually two, but there can be three or more. Examples of Chinese words of more than two syllables include 汉堡包 ; 漢堡包 ; hànbǎobāo ; 'hamburger', 守门员 ; 守門員 ; shǒuményuán ; 'goalkeeper', and 电子邮件 ; 電子郵件 ; diànzǐyóujiàn ; 'e-mail'. All varieties of modern Chinese are analytic languages : they depend on syntax (word order and sentence structure), rather than inflectional morphology (changes in

12272-482: 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

12390-512: The use of tones in Chinese is the application of the four tones of Standard Chinese, along with the neutral tone, to the syllable ma . The tones are exemplified by the following five Chinese words: In contrast, Standard Cantonese has six tones. Historically, finals that end in a stop consonant were considered to be " checked tones " and thus counted separately for a total of nine tones. However, they are considered to be duplicates in modern linguistics and are no longer counted as such: Chinese

12508-452: The words in newspapers, and 60% of the words in science magazines. Vietnam, Korea, and Japan each developed writing systems for their own languages, initially based on Chinese characters , but later replaced with the hangul alphabet for Korean and supplemented with kana syllabaries for Japanese, while Vietnamese continued to be written with the complex chữ Nôm script. However, these were limited to popular literature until

12626-517: The written language used throughout China changed comparatively little, crystallizing into a prestige form known as Classical or Literary Chinese . Literature written distinctly in the Classical form began to emerge during the Spring and Autumn period . Its use in writing remained nearly universal until the late 19th century, culminating with the widespread adoption of written vernacular Chinese with

12744-437: 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

12862-492: 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

12980-453: Was a koiné based on dialects spoken in the Nanjing area, though not identical to any single dialect. By the middle of the 19th century, the Beijing dialect had become dominant and was essential for any business with the imperial court. In the 1930s, a standard national language ( 国语 ; 國語 ; Guóyǔ ), was adopted. After much dispute between proponents of northern and southern dialects and an abortive attempt at an artificial pronunciation,

13098-421: 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

13216-485: Was hidden by their written form. Often different compounds for the same concept were in circulation for some time before a winner emerged, and sometimes the final choice differed between countries. The proportion of vocabulary of Chinese origin thus tends to be greater in technical, abstract, or formal language. For example, in Japan, Sino-Japanese words account for about 35% of the words in entertainment magazines, over half

13334-604: 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

13452-558: Was listed on the Stock Exchange of Hong Kong on 3 November 1993 and the Shanghai Stock Exchange on 6 January 1994; the latter, was renamed to Magang (Group) Holding Company Limited ( Chinese : 马钢（集团）控股有限公司 ) in 1998. Magang (Group) Holding Company Limited was also known as Masteel Group ( Chinese : 马钢集团 ) for short. Maanshan Iron and Steel Company Limited was one of the first state-owned enterprises of

13570-740: 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

13688-415: 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

13806-575: Was the world second-largest steel producer by volume in year 2018, while Masteel Group was ranked the 16th. In 2018, China Baowu Steel Group and their subsidiaries had produced 67.43 million metric tons of steel, while Masteel Group, including the subsidiary Maanshan Iron and Steel Co., Ltd., had produced 19.64 million metric tons. It was speculated by the journalist that the enlarged China Baowu Steel Group could reach 100 million metric tons of steel production capacity by their methodology, despite by equity ratio, Baowu only owned 22.23% shares of

13924-487: Was under construction to other investors in 2018. A section of that land had been developed by Masteel Group and the apartments and house were sold already. In 2003, the university of the group for the continuous education of the staff ( Chinese : 马钢职工大学 ), was transformed into Anhui Vocational College of Metallurgy and Technology ( Chinese : 安徽冶金科技职业学院 ). The university itself was founded in 1983. In 2004, Masteel Group transferred 17 primary and secondary schools to

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