They don’t need to lie if you can’t figure out what they mean! A dictionary said that a particular Chinese character used to mean a billion, but now it can be either a million or a trillion. I asked on a website for Chinese language and got contradictory answers, although one person said it’s one meaning in the IT¹ world and another to everyone else. So I did some further research: websites that claimed to convert Arabic numerals to Chinese, other dictionaries, Wikipedia, Google Translate², etc. The staggering list of inconsistencies is amazing. Now some of the differences are because mainland China has simplified some of the characters, and only a government accountant would give a hoot about the bigger ones. Anyway, the table below shows what I found (so far; I’m hesitant to look any further).
| 一 | 1 | 兆 | 1.00E+12 | |
| 十 | 10 | 十千亿 | 1.00E+12 | |
| 百 | 100 | 太 | 1.00E+12 | |
| 千 | 1,000 | 万亿 | 1.00E+12 | |
| 万 | 10,000 | 兆 | 1.00E+12 | |
| 萬 | 10,000 | 经 | 1.00E+16 | |
| 十万 | 100,000 | 經 | 1.00E+16 | |
| 兆 | 1,000,000 | 亿亿 | 1.00E+16 | |
| 百万 | 1,000,000 | 京 | 1.00E+16 | |
| 十兆 | 10,000,000 | 垓 | 1.00E+20 | |
| 千万 | 10,000,000 | 秭 | 1.00E+24 | |
| 亿 | 10,000,000 | 杼 | 1.00E+24 | |
| 億 | 10,000,000 | 穰 | 1.00E+28 | |
| 亿 | 100,000,000 | 壤 | 1.00E+28 | |
| 億 | 100,000,000 | 沟 | 1.00E+32 | |
| 十亿 | 1,000,000,000 | 溝 | 1.00E+32 | |
| 百亿 | 10,000,000,000 | 涧 | 1.00E+36 | |
| 万亿 | 10,000,000,000 | 澗 | 1.00E+36 | |
| 兆 | 10,000,000,000 | 正 | 1.00E+40 | |
| 千亿 | 100,000,000,000 | 载 | 1.00E+44 | |
| 十千亿 | 101,000,000,000 | ←!!³ | 載 | 1.00E+44 |
¹Information Technology
²Yes, I know how bad Google Translate is; don’t tell me.
³I think that source can’t be trusted.
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