Convert a Chinese Bank Statement to Excel
ICBC, Bank of China and China Construction Bank statement conversion, Chinese character handling and CNY formatting.
Chinese bank statements are usually well-structured. The issues are character encoding and column identification rather than layout complexity.
Column headers in Chinese
| Chinese | English |
|---|---|
| 交易日期 | Transaction date |
| 摘要 | Description / summary |
| 支出 | Debit / expenditure |
| 收入 | Credit / income |
| 余额 | Balance |
| 对方账户 | Counterparty account |
A converter matching English header text finds nothing. Column identification has to work from content type — which column holds parseable dates, which holds amounts, which holds the running balance — rather than from header words.
Content-based column detection
This is worth explaining because it is the approach that makes multilingual conversion possible at all. Instead of asking "which column is headed Date", you ask "which column contains values that parse as dates in a consistent format".
The balance column identifies itself the same way: it is the numeric column whose values, combined with the debit and credit columns, form a valid arithmetic chain. That is a strong signal and it works in any language.
Encoding
Chinese text needs UTF-8 throughout. A CSV exported in a local codepage will render as mojibake when opened elsewhere, which is why UTF-8 is the export default.
Alipay and WeChat Pay rows
Transactions routed through Alipay or WeChat Pay appear on the bank statement as transfers to or from the platform rather than as merchant purchases. The underlying merchant is often not visible on the bank statement at all.
That is a genuine limitation rather than a conversion problem: the detail is not in the document. For merchant-level analysis you would need the platform's own statement, which is a separate export.
Verifying
- Convert the statement Column identification works from content type rather than header language.
- Check the balance chain Which also confirms the columns were identified correctly.
- Compare against the printed totals For completeness as well as correctness.
- Export as UTF-8 And open CSVs via Data → From Text/CSV so the characters survive.
Frequently asked questions
Will Chinese descriptions be preserved?
Yes, in UTF-8. Open CSV exports via Data → From Text/CSV in Excel and set UTF-8 to avoid mojibake.
Can I see the merchant behind an Alipay payment?
Not from the bank statement — it records a transfer to the platform. Merchant detail requires the platform's own statement.
Are Hong Kong bank statements supported?
The reader works from the table on the page rather than a list of banks, so a statement from any Hong Kong bank is read the same way. The Completeness sheet tells you whether yours came out right.
Related posts
- Convert a UOB Bank Statement to Excel
- Convert a Philippine Bank Statement to Excel
- Convert an ADCB Statement to Excel
Convert a statement now
Bank Statement PDF to Excel, or see every format. More in the guides.