Weekly Viz 2022-10-03

Dollar Yuan Exchange Rate 1981-2022

USD to CNY recently hits 7.2, all the way from 6.3 in Feb 2022. I remember when I came to US around 2016, it was also ~7, but fluctuated quite a bit in recent years. But I don’t have much impression how it was before that. Therefore, this week, I am visualizing the USD to CNY exchange rate since 1981 (data source).

My Visualization

The visualization is simply the daily exchange rate trend, but I see some weird flat lines here and there, and some sharp increase/decreases. Therefore, I searched online, and tried to mark the reasons for each seemlingly ‘unnatural’ stage.

Please notice that all the visualizations are designed for desktop view, so it is recommended to view them on a desktop device.

Dashboard link

Insights

• It’s not suprising that whenever we see flat lines or sudden increase/decrease, it’s mostly due to government interventions. On one end, it means the exchange rate might not actually reflect the currency’s buying power, but on the other end, we also see it helps to stabalize China’s economy against financial crisis.

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