On November 7, 2026, the sixth-ranked item on Toutiao's hot board asked whether a deposit-rate turning point has arrived, under a headline that names a saver holding ¥5 million.
A market explainer published on November 1, 2026, by 财途信号灯, a self-media account on Tencent News, puts the big banks' listed three-year and five-year rates at 1.25% and 1.30%, and describes them as unchanged since May 20, 2025[1]. November 2026, on this record, is a market repricing at two speeds around a frozen listed rate. The repricing runs through small banks, long-duration products and certificate-of-deposit pricing.
The big banks' listed table has been unchanged in available reporting since May 20, 2025
The freeze has an official starting point. Financial News (金融时报), the PBOC-affiliated newspaper, reported that the six big state-owned banks carried out the seventh round of deposit-rate cuts on May 20, 2025. The top listed rates for fixed-term deposits (整存整取) settled at 0.98% for one year, 1.05% for two years, 1.25% for three years and 1.30% for five years, with current-account (demand) deposits at 0.05%[2]. Twelve joint-stock banks followed[2].
The November 1 report states that the three-year and five-year listed rates have not been adjusted since that May date[1]. No cited source records a change since. The freeze closes a long descent. The same newspaper had reported in June 2024 that the big banks' two-year and three-year deposit rates fell by a cumulative 104 and 150 basis points between 2019 and June 2024, more than the loan prime rate (LPR) fell over the same period[3].
The November report also rejects the version of the rumor in which every bank cuts rates in November under a unified directive. Its summary is that the long-term trend points lower while each bank moves at its own pace, and that small and mid-sized banks under deposit-raising pressure can hold decent rates for a time[1].
If the biggest banks did not move, the movement sits in the tiers below.
Small banks reprice upward while long-duration products shrink
Joint-stock banks quote around 1.30% on three-year deposits, with Hengfeng Bank, China Zheshang Bank and China Bohai Bank quoting up to 1.85%[1]. County-level rural commercial banks, rural credit cooperatives and village banks, the tier under heavy pressure to raise deposits, quote 1.60% to 2.05% on three-year deposits. The report names Sandu Fumin Village Bank as having lifted its three-year rate to 2% in October[1].
The timing follows the assessment calendar. According to the report, small and mid-sized banks raise deposit rates when quarter-end assessments and holiday fund flows coincide, and the rates fall back once the assessment window passes[1].
The five-year lineup is contracting at the same time. Guangdong Shixing Rural Commercial Bank has cut the renewal rate on maturing five-year deposits to 1.25% from October 15 and stopped adding new five-year products, and Hunan Sanxiang Bank delisted its five-year fixed deposits in May[1]. Hengfeng Bank launched a five-year certificate of deposit at 1.75% in October, and ICBC and Agricultural Bank of China were still selling five-year CDs at 1.55% to 1.60%[1]. Contraction, in the report's wording, describes the category as a whole, while individual banks keep specific products open[1].
The reward for the extra lock-in is thin at the listed rates. Three-year and five-year spreads sometimes narrow to 0.05 to 0.1 percentage points. At the 0.05-point end, a ¥100,000 deposit locked in for the two additional years earns ¥50 more per year[1].
Certificate-of-deposit pricing has drifted off the regular ladder as well. A three-year CD at China Minsheng Bank pays 1.74%, below the 1.75% of the bank's "安心存" fixed deposit of the same term[1]. Industrial Bank tightened its CD transfer rules from October 12, requiring transferred-in CDs to be held at least one natural day and capping the number of transfers per day[1].
Analysts trace the long-end cuts to net interest margins
The inversion predates November. Times Weekly (时代周报) reported in March 2025 that the apps of ICBC and China Construction Bank showed top three-year rates of 1.90% against five-year maxima of 1.55%[4]. China Merchants Bank's "灵动存" product paid 1.60% for one year, 1.70% for two, 1.50% for three and 1.55% for five, and China CITIC Bank's five-year rate of 1.60% sat below its three-year 1.90%[4]. Xinjiang Huihe Bank paid 2.9% for three-year deposits and 1.95% for five-year deposits, a 95-basis-point inversion, while Shenzhen Baosheng Village Bank topped out at 2.75% on both terms[4].
Dong Ximiao (董希淼), chief researcher at Zhaolian and deputy director of the Shanghai Finance and Development Laboratory, described the inversion as an autonomous decision by banks to strengthen asset-liability management and optimize interest-rate risk[4]. Ai Yawen (艾亚文), a senior analyst at the Rong360 Digital Technology Research Institute, pointed to banks' own funding costs. In Ai's reading, banks that issue high-rate long deposits while market rates are expected to fall lock in expensive liabilities and squeeze their net interest margins, which is why some banks cut the long end[4]. Ai also recorded the inversion intensifying through 2025 and reaching more bank types[4].
Enforcement now backs the listed table. By June 2024, the national market-based interest-rate pricing self-discipline mechanism had issued an initiative banning improper manual interest subsidies (手工补息), the practice of paying large corporate depositors off-rate top-ups that left listed rates lower while effective rates rose[3]. Improper add-ons had run between 10 and 100 basis points, and improper subsidies accounted for about 70% of the interest outlay on the deposits involved[3]. The initiative states that deposit rates should not breach authorized ceilings in disguise[3]. According to the November 1 report, the People's Bank of China moved in June 2026 to revise its deposit and loan interest-rate management rules and, for the first time at the rule level, named improper manual interest subsidies among violations[1].
What ¥5 million earns at the listed rates
The ¥5 million in the headline is an unverified story. At the listed three-year rate of 1.25%, the sum pays ¥62,500 a year in simple interest[2]. The five-year listed rate of 1.30% pays ¥65,000[2]. A three-year deposit at the roughly 2% level one depositor recalled to Financial News reporters in May 2025 would have paid about ¥100,000[2]. Against that recalled level, the current listed three-year rate pays about ¥37,500 a year less on the same sum.
The five-year listed rate pays ¥2,500 a year more than the three-year rate on this sum, in exchange for two more years of lock-in[2].
Deposit insurance covers principal plus agreed interest up to ¥500,000 at any one licensed bank, counted per depositor per bank across all accounts held there, and amounts above the cap can be spread across different licensed banks[1]. Keeping ¥5 million inside the cap at every bank would take at least ten licensed banks.
The report's other caveats are standing rules. High-rate offers from small banks often carry minimums of ¥50,000 to ¥200,000, limits on timing and amount, or bundled sales of wealth-management and insurance products, and the bundled products fall outside deposit insurance[1]. Early withdrawal of a fixed deposit accrues at the demand rate, the rule in force nationwide since the 2021 phase-out of tiered interest payment (靠档计息)[1]. Auto-renewal reprices a maturing deposit at the listed rate of the renewal day[1].
Inflation is already at the big banks' one-year rate
China's consumer price index rose 0.9% year on year in September 2026 and 0.2% month on month, and core CPI, which excludes food and energy, rose 1.0% year on year, according to the National Bureau of Statistics release of October 14, 2026[5]. The big banks' listed one-year rate is 0.98%[2]. September's overall CPI, at 0.9%, sits 0.08 percentage points below the big banks' 0.98% one-year listed rate.
Wen Bin (温彬), chief economist at China Minsheng Bank, describes how maturing and potential new deposits may rotate into low-risk wealth-management products under the price-comparison effect[2]. A Guosen Securities research report cited in the same piece put the weighted average annualized yield of bank wealth-management products at 2.70% in April 2025[2].
A turning point would register in the big banks' listed table before it reaches a headline. The November record shows that table at 1.25% and 1.30% for three and five years, unchanged since May 20, 2025[1][2]. The recorded movement sits at quarter-end rates at small banks that fade after the assessment window[1], in a contracting five-year lineup[1], and in CD pricing that occasionally undercuts ordinary deposits[1]. That combination is a market repricing at two speeds around a frozen listed rate.