Expats can look forward to getting more yuan for their buck this year, as plans to revaluate the renminbi appear set to go forward.

How will this affect your pay? Those who are currently making RMB should be delighted, as their paychecks will automatically have more buying power against other currencies, says Eric Warner, a Ph.D. candidate at the China Center for Economic Research at Peking University, who also blogs on Chinese policy developments at www.project39n.com.

Those earning USD may want to consider buying a stock of RMB to live on for the next few years now before it gets more expensive, he says. But though it may be tempting to convert your life savings into yuan and watch it appreciate in value, unless you are going to be in China for the long haul, your cash might be best kept elsewhere. Buying RMB in the hopes of making money will require patience, says Warner. “Don’t expect any windfalls.”

Though speculators would like it to be otherwise, China will not initiate a one-off yuan revaluation, which would hurt its export sector. Instead it will increase the value over a period of years, not months, says Chen Yanbin, assistant dean in the School of Economics at People’s University of China. The length of time necessary to see profits is compounded by the problem of getting money out of the country. The ease of converting foreign currency to yuan is not matched when going the other way. Changing yuan into foreign currencies, especially in large amounts, usually comes with taxes and strict limits, which could wipe out any gains made by converting to RMB in the first place, Warner warns.