The opening of foreign trade in the mid 19th century, especially the opium trade, created a large outflow of silver from China, resulting in increased living costs. This situation, coupled with the large number of foreign silver flooding the Chinese market, seriously undermined the old minted silver system. At the same time, due to insufficient copper mining at Yunnan and expensive foreign copper, there arose the phenomenon of poor quality coinage flooding the market. Because this system led to a shortage of money, the Qing Viceroy Zhang Zhidong issued banknotes in order to improve upon inadequate coinage in Hubei province. Kuroda Akinobu discussed in his essay two currency reforms in Hubei Province during 1893-1902 and 1903-1908. He especially focused on currency reform; however he did not go into detail about the silver tickets and other forms of official paper money used in the currency reforms.Zhang Zhidong issued government notes in Hubei Province in 1896. Due to the rough printing technology however, the printed government notes were easily copied, and this quickly led to large scale forging. In order to combat this, Zhang Zhidong decided to customize paper government notes from Japan. This paper will clarify the specific manufacturing method of the bills and other issues imported from Japan by Zhang Zhidong.
展开▼
