The paper money of the

Qing dynasty The Qing dynasty ( ), officially the Great Qing, was a Manchu-led Dynasties of China, imperial dynasty of China and an early modern empire in East Asia. The last imperial dynasty in Chinese history, the Qing dynasty was preceded by the ...

(

Traditional Chinese A tradition is a system of beliefs or behaviors (folk custom) passed down within a group of people or society with symbolic meaning or special significance with origins in the past. A component of cultural expressions and folklore, common examp ...

: ) was periodically used alongside a bimetallic coinage system of copper-alloy cash coins and silver

sycee A sycee (;.. from Cantonese , zh, j=Sai3 Si1, y=sai-sī, ). or yuanbao ( zh, t= 元寶, s= 元宝, poj=Goân-pó, j=jyun4 bou2, p=yuánbǎo, l=primary treasure, first=t) was a type of gold and silver ingot currency used in imperial China from ...

s; paper money was used during different periods of

Chinese history The history of China spans several millennia across a wide geographical area. Each region now considered part of the Chinese world has experienced periods of unity, fracture, prosperity, and strife. Chinese civilization first emerged in the Y ...

under the Qing dynasty, having acquired experiences from the prior

Song A song is a musical composition performed by the human voice. The voice often carries the melody (a series of distinct and fixed pitches) using patterns of sound and silence. Songs have a structure, such as the common ABA form, and are usu ...

, Jin, Yuan, and

Ming The Ming dynasty, officially the Great Ming, was an imperial dynasty of China that ruled from 1368 to 1644, following the collapse of the Mongol-led Yuan dynasty. The Ming was the last imperial dynasty of China ruled by the Han people, t ...

dynasties which adopted paper money but where uncontrolled printing led to

hyperinflation In economics, hyperinflation is a very high and typically accelerating inflation. It quickly erodes the real versus nominal value (economics), real value of the local currency, as the prices of all goods increase. This causes people to minimiz ...

. During the youngest days of the Qing dynasty paper money was used but this was quickly abolished as the government sought not to repeat history for a fourth time; however, under the reign of the

Xianfeng Emperor The Xianfeng Emperor (17 July 1831 – 22 August 1861), also known by his temple name Emperor Wenzong of Qing, personal name Yizhu, was the eighth emperor of the Qing dynasty, and the seventh Qing emperor to rule over China proper. During his re ...

, due to several large wars and rebellions (most notably the

Taiping Rebellion The Taiping Rebellion, also known as the Taiping Civil War or the Taiping Revolution, was a civil war in China between the Qing dynasty and the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom. The conflict lasted 14 years, from its outbreak in 1850 until the fall of ...

), the Qing government was forced to issue paper money again. The reason why the government was forced to reform the imperial monetary system with a very complex system during the Taiping Rebellion was because the rebels had blocked the access of mint metals from the southwest of China, but more money was still needed to fight the ongoing insurgency. The advisors of the Xianfeng Emperor not only introduced

copper-alloy Copper alloys are metal alloys that have copper as their principal component. They have high resistance against corrosion. Of the large number of different types, the best known traditional types are bronze, where tin is a significant addition, ...

cash coins with higher denominations than one, as well as introducing new cash coins made of metals other than

brass Brass is an alloy of copper and zinc, in proportions which can be varied to achieve different colours and mechanical, electrical, acoustic and chemical properties, but copper typically has the larger proportion, generally copper and zinc. I ...

, but also revived paper money in the shape of the ''Xianfeng baochao'' (). Quite important for the war effort is the fact that the imperial Qing government earned some revenue by issuing these new types of currencies. During the latter half of the 19th century various foreign banking corporations and credit institutes started doing business in China. The paper notes issued by these companies started circulating in China leading to many local companies imitating their designs and even outsourcing the production of paper money. The strong influence of these foreign banks had a modernising effect on both the economy and the currency of the Qing dynasty, leading to the imperial government issuing their own versions of modern paper money. The denominations on the paper money were as chaotic as that of the coinage types and the different exchange rates used regionally were also applied locally, while banknotes denominated in

currency had a different value than banknotes denominated in

silver Silver is a chemical element; it has Symbol (chemistry), symbol Ag () and atomic number 47. A soft, whitish-gray, lustrous transition metal, it exhibits the highest electrical conductivity, thermal conductivity, and reflectivity of any metal. ...

currency. Concurrently banknotes issued by different branches or different banks were also discounted with paper bills issued by more reliable banks being both valued more and in higher demand than those issued by institutions with a less favourable reputation. In the early 20th century the government of the Qing dynasty attempted to decimalise the currency among many other economic reforms and established a

central bank A central bank, reserve bank, national bank, or monetary authority is an institution that manages the monetary policy of a country or monetary union. In contrast to a commercial bank, a central bank possesses a monopoly on increasing the mo ...

to oversee the production of paper money; however, the chaotic monetary situation continued to plague interregional trade and would later be inherited by the

Republic of China Taiwan, officially the Republic of China (ROC), is a country in East Asia. The main geography of Taiwan, island of Taiwan, also known as ''Formosa'', lies between the East China Sea, East and South China Seas in the northwestern Pacific Ocea ...

History

and other early Qing paper money

During the

transition from Ming to Qing The transition from Ming to Qing (or simply the Ming-Qing transition) or the Manchu conquest of China from 1618 to 1683 saw the transition between two major dynasties in Chinese history. It was a decades-long conflict between the emerging Qing ...

, the Manchu government issued banknotes known as ''Hubu guanpiao'' () or '' Shunzhi guanpiao'' (). They were first issued in the year 1651 on initiative of the Minister of Revenue, Wei Xiangshu () during the war with the remnants of the Ming dynasty to cover the more immediate expenses of the Manchus; as the finances of the Qing during this period were in dire distress, these banknotes were declared void only a decade after their issue. Peng Xinwei suggests that the Manchus started issuing banknotes in response to the treasury of the Qing dynasty experiencing funding shortfalls which were occasioned by the a campaign to occupy the island of

Zhoushan Zhoushan is an urbanized archipelago with the administrative status of a prefecture-level city in the eastern Chinese province of Zhejiang. It consists of an archipelago of islands at the southern mouth of Hangzhou Bay off the mainland c ...

(near modern

Shanghai Shanghai, Shanghainese: , Standard Chinese pronunciation: is a direct-administered municipality and the most populous urban area in China. The city is located on the Chinese shoreline on the southern estuary of the Yangtze River, with the ...

). An annual amount of 128,000 '' guàn'' () were issued, with a total sum of 1.28 million being produced before they were abolished. The denominations of the followed the pattern of the Ming dynasty period paper notes, but as historiographical sources about the early Qing era paper money are scarce, not much can be known about them. After the it was only rarely suggested by court officials to reintroduce paper money to the Qing Empire. Among these were Cai Zhiding () in 1814 and Wang Yide (王懿德) in his treatise on money known as (). Peng Xinwei suggested that the Manchu rulers of the Qing were very much atavistic towards the inflationary pressure that the earlier Jurchen Empire experienced after they had abused their ability to print

Jiaochao Jiaochao () is a Chinese word for banknote first used for the currency of the Jurchen-led Jin dynasty and later by the Mongol-led Yuan dynasty of China. Jin dynasty The Jurchens swept control over northern China, conquering the Liao dynasty ...

banknotes. Modern scholars argue that the banknotes issued during the Shunzhi period, while only brief, likely entrenched the reluctance of the Qing dynasty to issue banknotes because this issue also proved inflationary confirming their fears. During this era, privately produced paper notes and

promissory note A promissory note, sometimes referred to as a note payable, is a legal instrument (more particularly, a financing instrument and a debt instrument), in which one party (the ''maker'' or ''issuer'') promises in writing to pay a determinate sum of ...

s known as () were used in the Chinese market that were mostly issued by private banks () and other merchants. These banknotes were known as (, 'corporate notes', (, 'silver notes'), or (, 'cash notes'). As is usual for China, the names designating privately produced banknotes varied greatly across the country, with names being used such as (), (), (), (), or (). The denominations used on them varied greatly with some reaching as high as 5 '' diào'' (, 'string of cash coins'). It has been suggested by

Taiwan Taiwan, officially the Republic of China (ROC), is a country in East Asia. The main geography of Taiwan, island of Taiwan, also known as ''Formosa'', lies between the East China Sea, East and South China Seas in the northwestern Pacific Ocea ...

ese economic historian Lin Man-houng that Chinese money shops did not start the production of their own private banknotes until the end of the Qianlong period. These shops were very likely to have been more developed in

Northern China Northern China () and Southern China () are two approximate regions that display certain differences in terms of their geography, demographics, economy, and culture. Extent The Qinling, Qinling–Daba Mountains serve as the transition zone ...

, where these money shops produced banknotes which were mostly denominated in cash coins, while banknotes from

Southern China Northern China () and Southern China () are two approximate regions that display certain differences in terms of their geography, demographics, economy, and culture. Extent The Qinling–Daba Mountains serve as the transition zone between ...

tended to be denominated in taels of silver. It is also possible that private-order banknotes could have emerged earlier in the 18th century and that their presence would become very common by the 1820s. By the middle of the 1800s various

Western Western may refer to: Places *Western, Nebraska, a village in the US *Western, New York, a town in the US *Western Creek, Tasmania, a locality in Australia *Western Junction, Tasmania, a locality in Australia *Western world, countries that id ...

credit institutes and foreign banking corporations were operating in the Qing dynasty. During the late 1840s they began producing

bills of exchange A negotiable instrument is a document guaranteeing the payment of a specific amount of money, either on demand, or at a set time, whose payer is usually named on the document. More specifically, it is a document contemplated by or consisting of a ...

, promissory notes, or other forms of paper money for the Chinese market, which the Chinese referred to as (). This introduced modern credit instruments to the traditional Chinese business world and greatly bolstered the reformist monetary discourse in China and would later be emulated by homegrown Chinese modern banks. This affected both the private market and the imperial Chinese bureaucracy.

Xianfeng era paper money

During most of the Manchu Qing dynasty, the monetary system largely relied mostly on copper-alloy

cash coins In economics, cash is money in the physical form of currency, such as banknotes and coins. In book-keeping and financial accounting, cash is current assets comprising currency or currency equivalents that can be accessed immediately or near-imm ...

() denominated in ''wén'' () for small transactions and the general retail market and silver

s ( or ) denominated in

tael Tael ( ),"Tael" entry
at the

The general

exchange rate In finance, an exchange rate is the rate at which one currency will be exchanged for another currency. Currencies are most commonly national currencies, but may be sub-national as in the case of Hong Kong or supra-national as in the case of ...

s between these two currencies fluctuated based both on time and on the location they were traded in, however the official exchange course was set by the imperial government as 1000 of copper-alloy cash coins for 1 tael of silver. Prior to 1800, the exchange rates were actually closer to 700 or 800 for 1 tael, but by the 19th century this had increased to 1200 . By the second half of the 19th century the imperial government of the Qing decided to experiment with cash coins that had a denomination higher than 1 which were known as Daqian, (, 'large money') because of copper shortages, but as the shortages ran higher the government decided to reintroduce paper money. Under the reign of the

the Great Qing Treasure Note () was introduced. These were based on the earlier

Great Ming Treasure Note The Great Ming Treasure Note () or Da Ming Baochao was a series of banknotes issued during the Ming dynasty in China. They were first issued in 1375 under the Hongwu Emperor. Although initially the Great Ming Treasure Note paper money was succes ...

from the Ming dynasty in style and layout and denominated in

Zhiqian Standard cash ( zh , first=t , t=制錢 , s= 制钱 , hp= zhì qián, links=yes; Manchu: ; Möllendorff: ''Durun i jiha''), or ''regulation cash coins'', is a term used during the Ming and Qing dynasties of China to refer to standard issue ...

(, 'standard cash coins') which were the high quality cash coins issued by the two central government mints in

Beijing Beijing, Chinese postal romanization, previously romanized as Peking, is the capital city of China. With more than 22 million residents, it is the world's List of national capitals by population, most populous national capital city as well as ...

. For this reason they were popularly nicknamed (, 'cash notes'). These banknotes were initially issued in the denominations 250 , 500 , 1,000 , 1,500 , and 2,000 but as the Chinese economy was suffering from inflation denominations of 5,000 , 10,000 , 50,000 and 100,000 were introduced. The Great Qing Treasure Notes were imprinted with a statement that they were convertible into copper cash coins, however the statement also included the line that these banknotes could not be used for tax payment to the government. In reality the Great Qing Treasure Notes were not redeemable at all. Imperial China saw itself as being at the center of the universe and that all territory "Under the Heavens" () and "Regions Within the

Four Seas The Four Seas () were four bodies of water that metaphorically made up the boundaries of ancient China. There is a sea for each for the four cardinal directions. The West Sea is Qinghai Lake, the East Sea is the East China Sea, the North Sea is ...

" () were included within their domains, and for this reason the copper-alloy cash notes of this era bear the four characters () in their right border design, which translated into

English English usually refers to: * English language * English people English may also refer to: Culture, language and peoples * ''English'', an adjective for something of, from, or related to England * ''English'', an Amish ter ...

means 'to circulate under the heavens'. The Great Qing Treasure Note banknotes were supposed to enjoy circulation in all territories of the Qing dynasty. In order to facilitate this widespread adoption of the new paper currency, the Great Qing Treasure Note banknotes were issued to the general public through semi-official banks known as the Yu banks, Qian banks, and Tian bank groups; these semi-official banks served as the fiscal agents of the Ministry of Revenue. Strictly speaking, the Xianfeng-era banknotes issued by the official banks did not fall under the monies issued by the Qing government. However, the status and function of official banks was intertwined with that of the Daqian, Great Qing Treasure Note, and , and the over-issue of banknotes by the official banks was probably the real reason for the Xianfeng inflation. Because the official banks were neither directly controlled by the Ministry of Revenue or supervised by them, and the fact that their operations were semi-commercial (as in they were operated by private merchants), few records of official banknotes exist today. Of the Tian (T'ien), Qian (Ch'ien), and Yu banks, the Qian banks were the oldest, as they were established in the year 1853 with four branch offices. The Qian banks were operated directly by the Ministry of Revenue for the purpose of salary payment of the bannermen. The Tian Group of banks was originally the royal pawnshop operated by the

Imperial Household Department The Imperial Household Department ( zh, t=內務府, s=内务府, p=Nèiwùfǔ, first=t; mnc, , v=dorgi baita be uheri kadalara yamun) was an institution of the Qing dynasty of China. Its primary purpose was to manage the internal affairs of the ...

of the Qing dynasty (Neiwufu) in 1841, in order to increase the private vault of the imperial household (which completely was separate from the imperial government vault). The Tian Group was converted to official banks in 1854 in order to "facilitate" the Tian banks into the service of salary payment for government officials. The Yu Group of banks was established in 1855; the Yu banks were semi-official banks and were operated by private merchants with imperial charter and would (very infrequently) receive deposits from the Ministry of Revenue. In reality however, these banking groups were both independent from the Chinese government and from each other and weren't under any form of imperial government supervision. There were five "Yu Banks" which were already existing Chinese private banks, while the Qian and Tian banks were large cash shops which received a government license to distribute the new paper currency. The Tian shops also fulfilled the purpose of being publicly funded pawnshops; they dealt in both pawned items and deposits. None of these institutions survived the inflation, drowning in an ever increasing sea of the Great Qing Treasure Note cash notes. By the year Xianfeng 11 (1861) these institutions had all closed as they went bankrupt. The fall of the Tian shops was quickened by Chinese peasants who, with the inflation affecting the paper money running rampant, opted to speedily redeem their pawned items with the depreciated Great Qing Treasure Note. This run on the Tian shops practically doomed the Chinese pawnshop business overnight. The Tian, Qian, and Yu banks were all modeled on the private ''

qianzhuang Qianzhuang () were local independent Chinese banks in the early modern period, as distinguished from the nation-wide bank networks headquartered in Shanxi province called the "Shanxi banks" (票號, ''piaohao''). Also known by a variety of reg ...

'' that were operating in Beijing at the time. The Tian, Qian, and Yu banks offered money exchange services, accepted deposits, and issued their own banknotes denominated in "metropolitan cash" (), hence they were known as () or (). Different banking groups would also deliver slightly different financial services and their funding situation also differed from each other. The banknotes issued by the Tian, Qian, and Yu banks were initially fully convertible, which made them similar to the already circulating ''

zhuangpiao The Zhuangpiao (), alternatively known as ''Yinqianpiao'' (銀錢票, "silver money notes"), ''Huipiao'' (會票, "corporate notes"), ''Pingtie'' (憑帖), ''Duitie'' (兌帖), ''Shangtie'' (上帖), ''Hupingtie'' (壺瓶帖), or ''Qitie'' (期� ...

''. Because of their similarities with the , the official banknotes were both recognised and widely used in the market. The difference of the Tian, Qian, and Yu banks from private financial institutions was that they were responsible for changing government paper notes (mostly the Great Qing Treasure Note cash notes) into real money (a combination of Daqian, iron cash coins, and official banknotes). With the Tian, Qian, and Yu banks acting as intermediaries, the government issued paper notes of Ministry of Revenue became convertible: they were linked to both the Daqian and a larger amount in unbacked official banknotes. During this era another type of banknote was also introduced known as the (, 'silver notes') or (, 'silver notes') which were issued by the Ministry of Revenue and were commonly known as ''Hubu guanpiao'' () for this fact. These silver notes were issued in denominations of values 1 tael, 3 taels, 5 taels, 10 taels, and 50 taels. These banknotes had a guideline written in both

Manchu The Manchus (; ) are a Tungusic peoples, Tungusic East Asian people, East Asian ethnic group native to Manchuria in Northeast Asia. They are an officially recognized Ethnic minorities in China, ethnic minority in China and the people from wh ...

and

Mandarin Chinese Mandarin ( ; zh, s=, t=, p=Guānhuà, l=Mandarin (bureaucrat), officials' speech) is the largest branch of the Sinitic languages. Mandarin varieties are spoken by 70 percent of all Chinese speakers over a large geographical area that stretch ...

declaring that they had to be discounted by 2% when they exchanged into Beijing market silver and when counted against the Kuping tael, the notes were discounted at 6 per cent. The conversion rate between copper-alloy cash notes () and silver tael notes () was two cash notes to one silver note, these banknotes exchangeable into copper cash coins and silver, but only in certain institutions in Beijing under the Ministry of Revenue. The term () was first used exclusively for paper notes issued by the imperial government, but later on was also used to refer to privately produced paper notes issued by private market banks and merchant companies. These banknotes were all introduced in 1854 and during the first few months after they were minted, they started being distributed in the form of salary for both government officials and the military; however, the imperial government itself did not accept them as a method of payment including for taxation, likewise many provincial governments also refused to accept the new paper currency. Later on these banknotes were slowly gaining acceptance throughout the Qing Empire. Consequentially due to their limited acceptability these paper notes were severely discounted in the private market sector, if accepted at all. In 1855 a cash note of 1000 or a silver note of 1 tael were just accepted for 450 Beijing cash (, ) or 200-300 standard cash coins by the private market. The market value of paper currency would consistently decrease as the imperial government kept printing both more of it and higher denominations, and by 1861 the government mandated paper money had overstayed their usefulness and consequently was completely abolished. During this year had already disappeared from general circulation, and a 1,000 cash note had a market value of as little as 26 , or 52 at the most. During the period when the Great Qing Treasure Note and series of banknotes were introduced, nine government banks in Beijing (of which four were newly established institutions) started issuing another type of cash note known as the (). These cash notes were backed by reserves kept in Daqian rather than standard cash coins. The were modeled after privately produced banknotes known as the (). These private cash notes would also continue to circulate alongside the new currencies. Both the and were based on the Jingqian accounting unit of cash coins as was used in Beijing. This meant that, for example, if one were to exchange 15,000 worth of or cash notes in the year 1861, that person would only receive 7500 worth of physical coins (or 750 cash coins of 10 to be more precise). This practice was asymmetrical as government documents noted a string of cash coins as 1000 while paying out only 500 for these cash notes. Both the Great Qing Treasure Note cash notes and tael notes continued to be accepted in the practice of office selling and would continue to circulate in the provinces of China proper as non-interest bearing debentures until 1867–1868. As the government of the Qing dynasty saw that banknotes that were denominated in "metropolitan cash" could circulate well in the Chinese market, the Qing government, besides promoting government issued Great Qing Treasure Note cash notes, also started to focus on the promotion of official banknotes with three major measures. The first of these measures was having the imperial government place large amounts of capital into the Qian and Tian banks and then encouraging them to produce more banknotes. These newly produced Qian and Tian banknotes were then directly transferred to the Qing Treasury vault and were used to pay for imperial government expenditures. The second measure undertaken to help promote official banknotes was depositing money with the Yu banks, as these banks primarily dealt with exchanging Great Qing Treasure Note cash notes for their own banknotes. The third and final measure undertaken to help promote official banknotes was establishing the Copper Donation Bureau, or () in Mandarin. The Copper Donation Bureau was originally created to encourage the citizens of the Qing dynasty to donate their copper in exchange for titles and/or degrees; afterwards the Copper Donation Bureau became solely responsible for receiving all kinds of donations to the Qing government, such as the () and the (). With these donations, the Copper Donation Bureau had enough reserves to issue its own banknotes (similar to the official banknotes) that were also put directly into the imperial government's Treasury to be used for its expenditures, where they were mostly used to pay for the bannermen's salaries. The total amount of banknotes issued by the Qian, Tian, and Yu banks is difficult to estimate because none of their bank account books have survived into the modern age. However, the number of official banknotes that were printed specifically for use in expenditures of the government of the Qing dynasty can be found in the imperial treasury records. The total number of official banknotes issued through government expenditure (from both the Qian and Tian Groups of official banks and the Copper Donation Bureau) was the equivalent to 31,953,038 taels of silver. As this rough estimate does not include the official banknotes that circulated in the private market through the money exchange services of these banks, and in particular the amount of banknotes issued by the Yu banks, the total quantity of official banknotes that circulated in the contemporary Chinese market was likely much higher. The reserves that the Qing government deposited into the Qian and Tian banks were not enough; government documents stated that the Qian banks received government endowments of 20,000 '' diào'' () in as initial capital directly from the imperial Chinese Treasury from the Ministry of Revenue. The government documents do not specify how often they pumped money into the official banks, nor is it specified in which form of currency the payment to these banks was realised. The imperial treasury records show that in 1853 a total number of 13,784 taels of silver was transferred from the government to the Qian and Tian banks "as their 20% reserve money". While the banknotes of the Qian, Tian, and Yu banks were denominated in "metropolitan cash" () or , in the official government treasury accounts all figures for banknotes were kept with () as the main unit of account. The figures for these official banknotes were converted by the official ratio between and , which was 2,000:1 (this means that the official ratio between a and a is 2:1). The reported total amount of official banknotes possessed by the imperial treasury was 63,906,076 , and was equivalent to 31,953,038 taels of silver at the official government-set exchange rate between copper-alloy cash coins and silver in 1853. The Chinese government records were deliberately kept vague to cover up the obvious fact that there was a shortage of capital. The reserves of the semi-private Yu banks seemed to be the weakest of all the official banks: they had an initial capital reserve of about 10,000 ; the Yu banks would later receive government deposits that were composed mainly of iron cash coins and lead cash coins. Because of their low capital reserves, the Yu banks experienced the worst case of over-issuing paper money, which caused a great demand for exchanging Great Qing Treasure Note cash notes against a limited reserve of mainly Daqian and Zhiqian. After a number of

bank run A bank run or run on the bank occurs when many Client (business), clients withdraw their money from a bank, because they believe Bank failure, the bank may fail in the near future. In other words, it is when, in a fractional-reserve banking sys ...

s, the Yu banks all folded in 1857; subsequently the Qian and Tian banks all folded due to bank runs in June 1861. During the early Tongzhi era (, 1862–1874), the provincial governments of

Henan Henan; alternatively Honan is a province in Central China. Henan is home to many heritage sites, including Yinxu, the ruins of the final capital of the Shang dynasty () and the Shaolin Temple. Four of the historical capitals of China, Lu ...

and

Sichuan Sichuan is a province in Southwestern China, occupying the Sichuan Basin and Tibetan Plateau—between the Jinsha River to the west, the Daba Mountains to the north, and the Yunnan–Guizhou Plateau to the south. Its capital city is Cheng ...

completely stopped accepting paper money for tax payments and again began requiring tax payments exclusively in silver, yet the provincial government of

Zhili Zhili, alternately romanized as Chihli, was a northern administrative region of China since the 14th century that lasted through the Ming dynasty and Qing dynasty until 1911, when the region was dissolved, converted to a province, and renamed ...

continued to accept the paper notes for tax payments, at least in a certain proportion to silver, which was preferred. The Xianfeng era paper currency was ultimately given up in 1868.

Foreign banks and the currency reforms of the late 19th and early 20th centuries

During the final decades of the 19th century, private Chinese banks and merchant companies used two types of paper money for their daily exchanges; one type was denominated in Chinese money and the other type was denominated in foreign currencies. Various foreign banks in China, which were locally known as () or (), issued paper money for local circulation. These foreign financial institutions both challenged the Chinese banking system and set an example for them to improve themselves. Foreign banks were crucial in laying the foundation for the rise of modern Chinese banks and the popularisation of banknotes in the Qing dynasty in the early 20th century. These foreign banks included Mackellar (), the

Hong Kong and Shanghai Banking Corporation HSBC Holdings plc ( zh, t_hk=滙豐; initialism from its founding member The Hongkong and Shanghai Banking Corporation) is a British universal bank and financial services group headquartered in London, England, with historical and business li ...

(), the

Deutsch-Asiatische Bank The Deutsch-Asiatische Bank (DAB; ) was a foreign bank in Asia, founded in 1889 in Shanghai. Even though its owners were private-sector banks and its principal activity was trade financing, its role has been described as "quasi-governmental" in ...

(), and the City Bank of New York () produced notes denominated in silver taels () and Chinese silver dollars (). The banknotes of Mackellar, the

HSBC HSBC Holdings plc ( zh, t_hk=滙豐; initialism from its founding member The Hongkong and Shanghai Banking Corporation) is a British universal bank and financial services group headquartered in London, England, with historical and business li ...

, and the Deutsch-Asiatische Bank were denominated in 1

tael Tael ( ),"Tael" entry
at the

yuan, 3 yuan, 10 yuan, 50 yuan, and 100 yuan. These banknotes were commonly used in the region around the

Yangtze River The Yangtze or Yangzi ( or ) is the longest river in Eurasia and the third-longest in the world. It rises at Jari Hill in the Tanggula Mountains of the Tibetan Plateau and flows including Dam Qu River the longest source of the Yangtze, i ...

. Meanwhile, in

Manchuria Manchuria is a historical region in northeast Asia encompassing the entirety of present-day northeast China and parts of the modern-day Russian Far East south of the Uda (Khabarovsk Krai), Uda River and the Tukuringra-Dzhagdy Ranges. The exact ...

the Russo-Chinese Bank () issued

Russian ruble The ruble or rouble (; Currency symbol, symbol: ₽; ISO 4217, ISO code: RUB) is the currency of the Russia, Russian Federation. Banknotes and coins are issued by the Central Bank of Russia, which is Russia's central bank, monetary authority ind ...

notes () and the

Japan Japan is an island country in East Asia. Located in the Pacific Ocean off the northeast coast of the Asia, Asian mainland, it is bordered on the west by the Sea of Japan and extends from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north to the East China Sea ...

ese banks operating in the region issued military notes (). In

the

Yokohama Specie Bank The was a Japanese bank founded in Yokohama in 1880, which dominated the Japanese market for trade finance in subsequent decades. It has been described as a "quasi-governmental exchange bank that was the overseas financial agent of the Japanese ...

() issued

gold Gold is a chemical element; it has chemical symbol Au (from Latin ) and atomic number 79. In its pure form, it is a brightness, bright, slightly orange-yellow, dense, soft, malleable, and ductile metal. Chemically, gold is a transition metal ...

notes () and Hong Kong notes () for the local market. Foreign banks established branches throughout imperial China in order to facilitate trade with the home country of those operating these companies. These credit institutions were not permitted to operate wherever they wished to set up an office and had no right to do business outside their assigned jurisdictions as their operations were limited to the "

treaty port Treaty ports (; ) were the port cities in China and Japan that were opened to foreign trade mainly by the unequal treaties forced upon them by Western powers, as well as cities in Korea opened up similarly by the Qing dynasty of China (before the ...

s" which the Chinese government had set aside under the terms of the indemnity laws enforced upon the Qing dynasty after losing two

opium wars The Opium Wars () were two conflicts waged between China and Western powers during the mid-19th century. The First Opium War was fought from 1839 to 1842 between China and Britain. It was triggered by the Chinese government's campaign to ...

. Operating entirely within the foreign-held enclaves of China, these banks were not subject to

Chinese law Chinese law is one of the oldest legal traditions in the world. The core of modern Chinese law is based on Germanic-style civil law, socialist law, and traditional Chinese approaches. For most of the history of China, its legal system has ...

, rather they were operating under the banking laws of their respective mother countries. Some foreign banks also maintained several branches in multiple treaty ports, which permitted a bank in one locality to discount its own banknotes from another branch. Despite the restrictions placed upon foreign banks their operations, with few exceptions, were so successful that the Chinese people preferred them over "indigenous" Chinese banks. Because their operations were so reliably managed, the banknotes issued by the foreign banks were in great demand and consequently circulated throughout all of Qing territory. The main financial institutions serving as intermediaries between the

Europe Europe is a continent located entirely in the Northern Hemisphere and mostly in the Eastern Hemisphere. It is bordered by the Arctic Ocean to the north, the Atlantic Ocean to the west, the Mediterranean Sea to the south, and Asia to the east ...

ans and the Chinese for financial purposes were the ''

'' (, known in

as "money shops" or "native banks"); the tended to be small proprietorships which had unlimited liability. These financial institutions were often sparsely aligned along family and

linguistic Linguistics is the scientific study of language. The areas of linguistic analysis are syntax (rules governing the structure of sentences), semantics (meaning), Morphology (linguistics), morphology (structure of words), phonetics (speech sounds ...

ties and they were rarely patronised by the local government authorities. Larger would issue

company scrip Company scrip is scrip (a substitute for government-issued legal tender or currency) issued by a company to payroll, pay its employees. It can only be exchanged in company stores owned by the employers. In the United Kingdom, such truck systems ...

against individual deposits which were known as (, 'shop coupon'). This scrip was also accepted by proximate shops, but to cash these out would take around 10–15 days after it was given to the shop. This was because couriers would have to liaise with the issuing shop in order to rule out fraudulent notes. During the 1860s the of Shanghai started looking to the foreign banking companies as a source of

capital Capital and its variations may refer to: Common uses * Capital city, a municipality of primary status ** Capital region, a metropolitan region containing the capital ** List of national capitals * Capital letter, an upper-case letter Econom ...

, and by 1888, sixty-two of the largest had engaged in borrowing millions of taels in silver in loans from foreign banks on a yearly basis. The would mobilise their domestic resources to an order of magnitude that would exceed the paid-up capital that they initially received several times over; this happened mostly through issuing banknotes and deposit receipts. British banks operating in China would often accept as a security for the loans they gave out to . This makes it plausible that chop loans originated because of the widely used prevalence of in China; British banks could not simply reject them when they were being offered to them by foreign merchants in China. During this era foreign banking companies tended to have an account with at least one , since only the guilds operated by them could clear the large number of forms that were circulating in the city of Shanghai. This happened through a rather elaborate daily mechanism which was dubbed (, 'draft exchange'). The main business foreign banks conducted themselves in was the handling of bills of exchange for which foreign banks enjoyed a practical monopoly in the lucrative

foreign exchange The foreign exchange market (forex, FX, or currency market) is a global decentralized or over-the-counter (OTC) market for the trading of currencies. This market determines foreign exchange rates for every currency. By trading volume, it i ...

business. The foreign banks were in such a dominant position that they dominated exchange rates between China and the outside world. As China was made up of many different types of currency in its different geographical areas, there existed a great opportunity for profit which foreigners benefited from. The currency situation in China made this profitability possible for the simple reason that in China hard money was always viewed as a commodity which only coincidentally served as a

medium of exchange In economics, a medium of exchange is any item that is widely acceptable in exchange for goods and services. In modern economies, the most commonly used medium of exchange is currency. Most forms of money are categorised as mediums of exchange, i ...

. This meant that a foreign bank's buying and selling rates on currency in circulation differed, generally returning a

net profit In business and Accountancy, accounting, net income (also total comprehensive income, net earnings, net profit, bottom line, sales profit, or credit sales) is an entity's income minus cost of goods sold, expenses, depreciation and Amortization (a ...

to the bank on each and every transaction dealing with money exchange. Additional sources of income for foreign banks operating in China were derived from floating loans for the cash-starved government of the Qing dynasty and by transmitting remittances to and from China. The monetary units ''yuan'' ( and ) were first seen during the late 18th century and were used on foreign-issued banknotes. In 1895 the first Chinese banknotes denominated in yuan () were issued, by the government-owned State Railway Company of Beiyang (). These banknotes were printed in

London London is the Capital city, capital and List of urban areas in the United Kingdom, largest city of both England and the United Kingdom, with a population of in . London metropolitan area, Its wider metropolitan area is the largest in Wester ...

and are generally seen as the first modern paper bills of China, as they are designed horizontally and in a much smaller format than the traditional Chinese paper notes, and are inscribed in Mandarin Chinese and

("Imperial Chinese Railways"). In 1895 the Central Paper Money Office in Tainan () in

issued banknotes denominated in the currency unit dayuan (, 'big yuan'), and had the denominations 1 dayuan, 5 dayuan, and 10 dayuan; however, these banknotes followed the traditional design of Chinese paper notes. The

Imperial Bank of China The Imperial Bank of China (Traditional Chinese: 中國通商銀行, Simplified Chinese: 中国通商银行) was the first Chinese-owned bank modelled on Western banks and banking practices. It was founded in Shanghai by Mr. Sheng Xuanhuai in 1 ...

(, IBC) was founded in 1897 based on a suggestion made by

Sheng Xuanhuai Sheng Xuanhuai (; November 4, 1844 – April 27, 1916) was a Qing dynasty Chinese tycoon, politician, and educator. He founded several major banks and universities and served as Minister of Transportation of the Qing Empire. He was also known as ...

(, 1844–1916). In 1898 it began issuing the first Chinese commercial cheques () which were denominated in taels or in yuan. The IBC is also notable for being the first Chinese bank to order its banknotes from foreign printing bureaus. In 1913 (after the fall of the Qing dynasty) the Imperial Bank of China was renamed the

Commercial Bank of China Commercial may refer to: * (adjective for) commerce, a system of voluntary exchange of products and services ** (adjective for) trade, the trading of something of economic value such as goods, services, information or money * a dose of advertising ...

(). Various provincial authorities also started issuing local paper money during this era. In the province of

Hubei Hubei is a province of China, province in Central China. It has the List of Chinese provincial-level divisions by GDP, seventh-largest economy among Chinese provinces, the second-largest within Central China, and the third-largest among inland ...

, the local money office () started producing banknotes of 1000 which used the traditional Chinese banknote designs. Later, in 1899, the

Zhang Zhidong Zhang Zhidong ( zh, t=張之洞) (2 September 18374 October 1909) was a Chinese politician who lived during the late Qing dynasty. Along with Zeng Guofan, Li Hongzhang and Zuo Zongtang, Zhang Zhidong was one of the four most famous offici ...

(),

Viceroy of Huguang The Viceroy of Huguang, fully in Chinese as the Governor-General of Hubei, Hunan and Other Local Areas, in Charge of Military Affairs, Food and Wages and Governor Affairs, was one of eight regional Viceroys in China#Qing dynasty, Viceroys during ...

ordered the local money office to also start making modern-style banknotes. The production of these was outsourced to the

Empire of Japan The Empire of Japan, also known as the Japanese Empire or Imperial Japan, was the Japanese nation state that existed from the Meiji Restoration on January 3, 1868, until the Constitution of Japan took effect on May 3, 1947. From Japan–Kor ...

using high-quality methods; however, the design of these banknotes was still vertical as opposed to the horizontal banknotes used elsewhere. In the province of Guangdong, a series of modern-style banknotes was introduced in 1904 which were denominated in 1 yuan, 5 yuan, and 10 yuan. These banknotes were printed by the Japanese

Ministry of the Treasury The was a division of the eighth-century Japanese government of the Imperial Court in Kyoto, instituted in the Asuka period and formalized during the Heian period. The Ministry was replaced in the Meiji period. Overview The nature of the min ...

(), but unlike the notes printed for Hubei had a Western-style vertical design. The principal function of a foreign bank was to promote and finance foreign trade. For this reason foreign banks in Qing China could only finance projects within the treaty ports and were not allowed to participate in those beyond without sanction of the imperial Chinese government. In this way foreign banks did not compete with the interests of the local Chinese commercial banks. Typically, a foreign bank would return an annual profit of from 15% to 20% to its

shareholder A shareholder (in the United States often referred to as stockholder) of corporate stock refers to an individual or legal entity (such as another corporation, a body politic, a trust or partnership) that is registered by the corporation as the ...

s. The funds held on deposit by foreign banks were always large, and compared to the funds of Chinese commercial banks were extremely secure, as the bulk of them represented Chinese customs and salt revenues held as collateral against foreign loans. Because of this security, the banknotes issued by foreign banks were in great demand by the Chinese causing them to circulate freely throughout the Chinese empire, in contrast to the limitations placed upon the banks' operations which were only allowed inside of the treaty ports. During the late Qing dynasty period the old paper notes remained in common usage; these included the traditional privately produced paper notes which were printed on one side of the bill issued by merchant banks known as (), (), and () and pawn shops known as (), as well as the old-style banknotes issued by provincial government institutions, to the modern banknotes which were introduced by a dozen or so of foreign banks operating in China and modern Chinese banks which were created in very large numbers in the later years of the 19th century. Furthermore, there were also banknotes which were brought into the Chinese financial markets by imperial government-owned firms like railway companies, and foreign bills coming to China through the trade ports like

. The large spectrum of these types of paper money reflected the structure of the general Chinese credit market in the late Qing period. The traditional Chinese credit institutes were local banks, banks, banks, and pawnshops, of which a considerably number was always to be found in each city across the Chinese Empire. Many provincial governments founded their own local provincial, state-owned banks which were known as () or (); in some provinces even several modern credit institutes were to be found, like the Yuning Bank () and the Yusu Bank () in the province of

Jiangsu Jiangsu is a coastal Provinces of the People's Republic of China, province in East China. It is one of the leading provinces in finance, education, technology, and tourism, with its capital in Nanjing. Jiangsu is the List of Chinese administra ...

. Quite a few of these provincial credit companies opened branches in other provinces due to their success. After it became clear to the Qing government that their finances were not going to remain self-sufficient in light of the two

Opium Wars The Opium Wars () were two conflicts waged between China and Western powers during the mid-19th century. The First Opium War was fought from 1839 to 1842 between China and Britain. It was triggered by the Chinese government's campaign to ...

, the

First Sino-Japanese War The First Sino-Japanese War (25 July 189417 April 1895), or the First China–Japan War, was a conflict between the Qing dynasty of China and the Empire of Japan primarily over influence in Joseon, Korea. In Chinese it is commonly known as th ...

, and the

Boxer Rebellion The Boxer Rebellion, also known as the Boxer Uprising, was an anti-foreign, anti-imperialist, and anti-Christian uprising in North China between 1899 and 1901, towards the end of the Qing dynasty, by the Society of Righteous and Harmonious F ...

, the imperial Chinese court decided that it would have to raise capital through the foreign banking corporations operating in China. The Chinese defeats during these wars were perceived as being unexpected by the Qing government and threw it into a state of turmoil; the Qing was plunged deeply into debt to pay for war indemnities making the need for foreign capital great. The foreign banking corporations that had been established in the preceding decades then saw the opportunity to quickly expand their business in China to meet the Chinese government's demands. By the end of the 19th century there were a total of 19 foreign banks operating in China with 101 branches spread over the important trading cities. These foreign bank corporations enjoyed the protection of extraterritoriality laws and were able to issue their own banknotes to circulate within Qing territory, had the ability to take in large deposits, and were trusted to manage the Maritime Customs revenue and Chinese government transfers. These foreign banks also served as acting receiving agents for war indemnities which were owed by the Qing government to foreign nations. The largest loans that were negotiated under the Chinese "borrowing foreign capital" policy were through the

Hongkong and Shanghai Banking Corporation HSBC Holdings plc ( zh, t_hk=滙豐; initialism from its founding member The Hongkong and Shanghai Banking Corporation) is a British universal bank and financial services group headquartered in London, England, with historical and business li ...

(HSBC). Between the years 1895 and 1911 HSBC concluded a total of 112 loans to the government of the Qing dynasty which were worth 1,806,000,000 silver dollars. Of paramount principle among the business interests of the Chinese government during the Qing dynasty was the financing of 2,800 miles of newly constructed railroads in the

Yangtze valley The Yangtze or Yangzi ( or ) is the longest river in Eurasia and the third-longest in the world. It rises at Jari Hill in the Tanggula Mountains of the Tibetan Plateau and flows including Dam Qu River the longest source of the Yangtze, i ...

. All these expensive loans with various foreign banking corporations were secured by China's salt tax as well as Chinese customs revenues. By making so many loans to the Chinese government, foreign banking companies were able to establish what were essentially

spheres of influence In the field of international relations, a sphere of influence (SOI) is a spatial region or concept division over which a state or organization has a level of cultural, economic, military, or political exclusivity. While there may be a formal a ...

in different regions of China, with the

Russians Russians ( ) are an East Slavs, East Slavic ethnic group native to Eastern Europe. Their mother tongue is Russian language, Russian, the most spoken Slavic languages, Slavic language. The majority of Russians adhere to Eastern Orthodox Church ...

in the

northeast The points of the compass are a set of horizontal, radially arrayed compass directions (or azimuths) used in navigation and cartography. A '' compass rose'' is primarily composed of four cardinal directions—north, east, south, and west—eac ...

(specifically

), the United Kingdom which enjoyed more influence in the Yangtze valley, the Japanese Empire which exercised their influence in the

northern Northern may refer to the following: Geography * North North is one of the four compass points or cardinal directions. It is the opposite of south and is perpendicular to east and west. ''North'' is a noun, adjective, or adverb indicating ...

and central regions of China, and the French who were more influential in the southern regions. From the mid-nineteenth century up to the beginning of

World War II World War II or the Second World War (1 September 1939 – 2 September 1945) was a World war, global conflict between two coalitions: the Allies of World War II, Allies and the Axis powers. World War II by country, Nearly all of the wo ...

, no fewer than twelve foreign countries maintained banks in China. Due to a large number of

unequal treaties The unequal treaties were a series of agreements made between Asian countries—most notably Qing China, Tokugawa Japan and Joseon Korea—and Western countries—most notably the United Kingdom, France, Germany, Austria-Hungary, Italy, the Unit ...

, foreign banks enjoyed extraterritoriality rights when operating in China, which also included the freedom to issue their own banknotes. The influx of foreign banks into China also brought with them a new type of financing which became an inspiration for Chinese entrepreneurs to found similar financial institutions in China itself; some of these were government-owned institutions, while others were privately run. These institutions were the made up of the following banks: *

(); * Da-Qing Bank (); *

Bank of Communications Bank of Communications (BOCOM or BankComm) is a Chinese multinational banking and financial services corporation. It was originally established in 1908 and was one of a handful of domestic Chinese banks that issued banknotes in modern history. ...

(); * Ningpo Commercial Bank (); * Bank of Territorial Development (); * Hsing Yeh Bank of Che Kiang or Industrial Bank of Che Kiang () in

Zhejiang ) , translit_lang1_type2 = , translit_lang1_info2 = ( Hangzhounese) ( Ningbonese) (Wenzhounese) , image_skyline = 玉甑峰全貌 - panoramio.jpg , image_caption = View of the Yandang Mountains , image_map = Zhejiang i ...

; * Che Kiang Bank () in Zhejiang; * Sin Chun Bank of China () in

; * Hsin I Savings Bank () in

Hankou Hankou, alternately romanized as Hankow (), was one of the three towns (the other two were Wuchang and Hanyang) merged to become modern-day Wuhan city, the capital of the Hubei province, China. It stands north of the Han and Yangtze Rivers w ...

; * Beijing Savings Bank () in

; * Baoshan Yinhang () in Beijing; * Hetai Yinhang () in

Yangzhou Yangzhou is a prefecture-level city in central Jiangsu Province, East China. Sitting on the north bank of the Yangtze, it borders the provincial capital Nanjing to the southwest, Huai'an to the north, Yancheng to the northeast, Taizhou, Jiangsu, ...

; * Chinese Mercantile Bank () in Yangzhou. Despite the fact that the number of these banks was not very high, their business proved to have a great impact on the modernisation of the financial and monetary system of China during the late imperial and the early Republican era. Even certain government-owned institutions like the railway corporations can be seen as modern credit institutes because they issued their own modernised paper money. An alternative narrative argues that privately issued banknotes by native banks and local money shops had become a fundamental in the late-Imperial Chinese currency system a long time before the entry of Western banking corporations into China during the late 1840s. An important hypothesis of this alternative narrative speculates that the Chinese population at the time did not trust government-issued banknotes, while banknotes issued by established private banks, shops and financiers tended to be well-accepted by the general populace. By the end of the 19th century provincial governments started setting up their own note issuing banks like the

Hupeh Provincial Bank Hubei is a province in Central China. It has the seventh-largest economy among Chinese provinces, the second-largest within Central China, and the third-largest among inland provinces. Its provincial capital at Wuhan serves as a major politic ...

(, ) with branches in

Wuchang Wuchang is one of 13 urban District (China), districts of the prefecture-level city of Wuhan, the capital of Hubei, Hubei Province, China. It is the oldest of the three cities that merged into modern-day Wuhan, and stood on the right (southea ...

and

. The issued a series of banknotes known as the ''Hubei guanpiao'' (). These banknotes were denominated in

tael Tael ( ),"Tael" entry
at the

strings String or strings may refer to: *String (structure), a long flexible structure made from threads twisted together, which is used to tie, bind, or hang other objects Arts, entertainment, and media Films * ''Strings'' (1991 film), a Canadian anim ...

for copper-alloy cash coins. The Hubei was abolished over a decade after the fall of the Qing dynasty in 1927 with the bankruptcy of the . China signed the

Mackay Treaty The Mackay Treaty () was a sixteen article treaty signed by the governments of the United Kingdom and the Chinese Qing dynasty on 5September 1902. Under the terms of the treaty, the ''likin'' system of taxation was abolished and the first moves ma ...

with the United Kingdom on 5 September 1902. This treaty included a provision where the imperial Chinese government would create a uniform coinage "which shall be legal tender in payment of all duties taxes and other obligations throughout the Empire by British and Chinese subjects". The idea behind this provision was to remove obstacles for trading in the form of a very diverse coinage system throughout China. The reality was that subsidiary production of coinage was not so lucrative to begin with. Despite the provisions set for creating a uniform coinage, the treaty made no reference to banknotes. During this era both local and foreign businesses demanded the creation of a uniform Chinese currency system, which would not occur during the Qing dynasty era. There was a major question at the time whether this uniform currency system would be placed on the

silver standard The silver standard is a monetary system in which the standard economic unit of account is a fixed weight of silver. Silver was far more widespread than gold as the monetary standard worldwide, from the Sumerians 3000 BC until 1873. Following t ...

or the

gold standard A gold standard is a backed currency, monetary system in which the standard economics, economic unit of account is based on a fixed quantity of gold. The gold standard was the basis for the international monetary system from the 1870s to the ...

. The introduction of a uniform currency also meant that the responsibility over monetary affairs would be completely transferred over to the hands of the imperial government which at the time was heavily in debt and did not have any grip on its own finances.

Establishing a national bank

During the later part of the Qing dynasty era there was a discussion on whether or not the imperial Chinese government would have to establish a national bank, which it finally did in 1905. Peng Shu () stated before the introduction of new banknotes that the national bank would have to keep sufficient reserves in "tangible" money () at all times. The large number of private notes that were being produced all over the empire was to be restricted by introducing a stamp duty (). The reformer

Liang Qichao Liang Qichao (Chinese: 梁啓超; Wade–Giles: ''Liang2 Chʻi3-chʻao1''; Yale romanization of Cantonese, Yale: ''Lèuhng Kái-chīu''; ) (February 23, 1873 – January 19, 1929) was a Chinese politician, social and political activist, jour ...

campaigned for the government of the Qing dynasty to emulate the Western world and Japan by embracing the

, unifying the currencies of China, and issuing government-backed banknotes with a ⅓ metallic reserve. At the end of 1905 the Da-Qing Bank was founded, and the production of the banknotes was entrusted to the prints of the

Beiyang Newspaper The term Beiyang (; pinyin: Běiyáng; Wade-Giles: Peiyang) literally means Northern Ocean. Initially a purely geographic term, it originated toward the end of the Qing dynasty, and it referred to the coastal provinces of Zhili (Traditional Chin ...

() in

. In 1906 the government of the Qing dynasty sent students to Japan to be educated in modern printing techniques, with the aim to have the

Shanghai Commercial Press The Commercial Press () is the first modern publishing organization in China. The Commercial Press is known for its academic publishing and translation work in humanities and social sciences, as well as the ''Xinhua Dictionary''. History In 1 ...

() print the cheques of the Ministry's Bank. The Da-Qing Bank were still issuing two different types of banknotes. One series was denominated in tael, known as the (), and had denominations of 1 tael, 5 taels, 10 taels, 50 taels, and 100 taels. The other series was denominated in yuan, known as the () and was issued in denominations of 1 yuan, 5 yuan, 10 yuan, 50 yuan, and 100 yuan. In the year 1907 the Da-Qing Bank of the Ministry of Revenue was renamed the Da-Qing Bank (); accordingly the inscription on all banknotes had to be changed to reflect this. Following the Chinese tradition of issuing new money in a new reign, the

Xuantong Puyi (7 February 190617 October 1967) was the final emperor of China, reigning as the eleventh monarch of the Qing dynasty from 1908 to 1912. When the Guangxu Emperor died without an heir, Empress Dowager Cixi picked his nephew Puyi, aged tw ...

administration had the design of the official Da-Qing Bank paper notes somewhat changed to herald in the new emperor. The new design was inspired by the designs of the

banknotes of the United States dollar From 1775 to 1779, the Continental Congress issued Continental currency banknotes. Then there was a period when the United States just used gold and silver, rather than paper currency. In 1812, the US began issuing Treasury Notes, although the ...

of this era; some banknotes showed the portrait of

Li Hongzhang Li Hongzhang, Marquess Suyi ( zh, t=李鴻章; also Li Hung-chang; February 15, 1823 – November 7, 1901) was a Chinese statesman, general and diplomat of the late Qing dynasty. He quelled several major rebellions and served in importan ...

, and others depicted that of

Zaifeng, Prince Chun Zaifeng (12 February 1883 – 3 February 1951), also known as Tsai Feng, Prince of Ch'ün, formally known by his title Prince Chun, was a Manchu prince and regent of the late Qing dynasty. He was a son of Yixuan, the seventh son of the Dao ...

who at the time was the current Chinese Minister of Finance. At the eve of the

Xinhai Revolution The 1911 Revolution, also known as the Xinhai Revolution or Hsinhai Revolution, ended China's last imperial dynasty, the Qing dynasty, and led to the establishment of the Republic of China (ROC). The revolution was the culmination of a decade ...

in 1911, there were 5,400,000 tael worth of banknotes circulating in China, and 12,400,000 yuan in banknotes.

List of banknotes denominated in copper-alloy cash coins issued during the Xianfeng era

List of banknotes denominated in copper-alloy cash coins issued during the Xianfeng era:

List of banknotes denominated in silver taels issued during the Xianfeng era

List of banknotes denominated in silver tael

s issued during the Xianfeng era:

Banknotes produced by Belgian banks

The

Kingdom of Belgium Belgium, officially the Kingdom of Belgium, is a country in Northwestern Europe. Situated in a coastal lowland region known as the Low Countries, it is bordered by the Netherlands to the north, Germany to the east, Luxembourg to the southe ...

, despite being a small country, was a state with a rather highly developed industrial base and which also enjoyed being a centre of international trade during the later 19th and early 20th centuries. The Sino-Belgian Bank (

French French may refer to: * Something of, from, or related to France ** French language, which originated in France ** French people, a nation and ethnic group ** French cuisine, cooking traditions and practices Arts and media * The French (band), ...

: ) was founded by King Leopold for doing business in remittances and conducting international trade; the Sino-Belgian Bank belied its name because it did not have any indigenous Chinese participation at all, making it a purely Belgian company. Following the

in 1900 the Sino-Belgian Bank set up a branch in Shanghai, where its primary business was in handling out long-term loans for the construction of railways in China. Other branches were later opened in the cities of Beijing, Tianjin, and Hankou. Belgium itself benefited from this as it exported materials to China, especially construction materials which were used for railroads. In the scramble for Chinese railroad concessions the Sino-Belgian Bank worked closely together with the Compagnie General de Chemins de Fer et de Tramways en Chine to issue bonds, first in 1903 and once more in 1913. These company bonds were used to finance Chinese railroad construction during the early 20th century. The Sino-Belgian Bank issued banknotes in the year 1908 with denominations of 1 dollar, 5 dollars, 10 dollars, and 50 dollars at all of its branches as

Mexican dollar The Spanish dollar, also known as the piece of eight (, , , or ), is a silver coin of approximately diameter worth eight Spanish reales. It was minted in the Spanish Empire following a monetary reform in 1497 with content fine silver. It w ...

s, alluding to the old Spanish silver dollars that were traditionally in wide circulation across the

Far East The Far East is the geographical region that encompasses the easternmost portion of the Asian continent, including North Asia, North, East Asia, East and Southeast Asia. South Asia is sometimes also included in the definition of the term. In mod ...

, even during

Ming dynasty The Ming dynasty, officially the Great Ming, was an Dynasties of China, imperial dynasty of China that ruled from 1368 to 1644, following the collapse of the Mongol Empire, Mongol-led Yuan dynasty. The Ming was the last imperial dynasty of ...

times. They initially emanated from the

Philippines The Philippines, officially the Republic of the Philippines, is an Archipelagic state, archipelagic country in Southeast Asia. Located in the western Pacific Ocean, it consists of List of islands of the Philippines, 7,641 islands, with a tot ...

as part of the

Spanish East Indies The Spanish East Indies were the colonies of the Spanish Empire in Asia-Pacific, Asia and Oceania from 1565 to 1901, governed through the Captaincy General of the Philippines, captaincy general in Manila for the Monarchy of Spain, Spanish Crown, i ...

in the

Spanish colonial empire The Spanish Empire, sometimes referred to as the Hispanic Monarchy or the Catholic Monarchy, was a colonial empire that existed between 1492 and 1976. In conjunction with the Portuguese Empire, it ushered in the European Age of Discovery. It a ...

from the

Manila-Acapulco Galleon Trade The Manila galleon (; ) refers to the Spanish trading ships that linked the Philippines in the Spanish East Indies to Mexico (New Spain), across the Pacific Ocean. The ships made one or two round-trip voyages per year between the ports of Man ...

with

Mexico Mexico, officially the United Mexican States, is a country in North America. It is the northernmost country in Latin America, and borders the United States to the north, and Guatemala and Belize to the southeast; while having maritime boundar ...

that minted the silver coins, which were usually mined in

Bolivia Bolivia, officially the Plurinational State of Bolivia, is a landlocked country located in central South America. The country features diverse geography, including vast Amazonian plains, tropical lowlands, mountains, the Gran Chaco Province, w ...

Peru Peru, officially the Republic of Peru, is a country in western South America. It is bordered in the north by Ecuador and Colombia, in the east by Brazil, in the southeast by Bolivia, in the south by Chile, and in the south and west by the Pac ...

. These banknotes mostly circulated within the

Shanghai International Settlement The Shanghai International Settlement () originated from the 1863 merger of the British Concession (Shanghai), British and American Concession (Shanghai), American list of former foreign enclaves in China, enclaves in Shanghai, in which Brit ...

and the

Shanghai French Concession The Shanghai French Concession was a concessions in China, foreign concession in Shanghai, Republic of China (1912–1949), China from 1849 until 1943. For much of the 20th century, the area covered by the former French Concession remained the ...

. In 1912 the Sino-Belgian Bank changed its name to the

Banque Belge Pour l'Étranger The ''Banque Belge pour l'Étranger'' (BBE, ) was a Belgian bank that channeled many international banking operations of its controlling shareholder the Société Générale de Belgique (SGB) in the first half of the 20th century. It was original ...

. Banknotes issued after 1912 during the Republican period carried the new name of the bank to reflect this change. At the Shanghai International Settlement the circulation of paper notes was by the never allowed to exceed 1,000,000 dollars. The Sino-Belgian Bank/ enjoyed a positive reputation in China and its banknotes were at all times well-received and could easily be redeemed at the bank's offices. The was forced to cease its business when the Chinese republican government took over the Chinese economy from foreign management in the year 1935.

Banknotes produced by British banks

British British may refer to: Peoples, culture, and language * British people, nationals or natives of the United Kingdom, British Overseas Territories and Crown Dependencies. * British national identity, the characteristics of British people and culture ...

banknotes in China during the Qing dynasty were by far the most common and the most highly esteemed of all banknotes of foreign origin circulating in China at the time. Early British banknotes that circulated in China became very influential for later Chinese banknotes and were essential for informing Chinese monetary thinking later in the 19th century and early 20th century.

Early British Indian banks in China

At one time there were never less than 15 British-owned banks that did business in the Qing dynasty; seven of these banks were from the

British Indian Empire The British Raj ( ; from Hindustani language, Hindustani , 'reign', 'rule' or 'government') was the colonial rule of the British The Crown, Crown on the Indian subcontinent, * * lasting from 1858 to 1947. * * It is also called Crown rule ...

. After the conclusions of the

First First most commonly refers to: * First, the ordinal form of the number 1 First or 1st may also refer to: Acronyms * Faint Images of the Radio Sky at Twenty-Centimeters, an astronomical survey carried out by the Very Large Array * Far Infrared a ...

and

Second Opium War The Second Opium War (), also known as the Second Anglo-Chinese War or ''Arrow'' War, was fought between the United Kingdom, France, Russia, and the United States against the Qing dynasty of China between 1856 and 1860. It was the second major ...

s the United Kingdom forced a number of "

" on the Qing demanding trade rights with several Chinese ports which became known as

s. Soon after these agreements were signed, the leading merchant houses of British India, setting themselves up as private banks, pursued new sources of revenue in imperial China. Both the central and provincial governments held very little restraint in printing paper money during the Xianfeng period; this made it so that

the Bund The Bund is a waterfront area and a protected historical district in central Shanghai. The area centers on a section of Zhongshan Road (East Zhongshan Road No.1) within the former Shanghai International Settlement, which runs along the wester ...

in the foreign concessions of

was one of the few places in China where paper money had actually been standardised. This also led to the Bund being one of the few places where paper money could actually be exchanged for silver trade dollars or silver bullion of quality that could be verified without regard to the outside political climate. This situation was not much different in the city of Shanghai until the first British banks established offices there. The first of these, the

Oriental Bank Corporation The Oriental Bank Corporation (), or "OBC", was a British imperial bank founded in India in 1842 which grew to be prominent throughout the Far East. As an Exchange bank, the OBC was primarily concerned with the finance of trade and exchanges of ...

, was quick to establish a branch in Qing territory. The Oriental Bank Corporation went bankrupt in 1884. The

-based Chartered Mercantile Bank of India, London and China opened a branch in the British crown colony of Hong Kong in 1845 and some time after the branch's establishment commenced issuing banknotes denominated in Spanish milled dollars as

s due to the former wide circulation of Spanish silver dollar, even in

times, through trade with the

as part of the

in the

that minted the silver coins from

. This series of paper notes was based upon the Carlos silver dollar, which at the time was still the generally preferred

among Chinese merchants. The Chartered Mercantile Bank of India, London and China later opened a branch in the British concession of the port city of Shanghai in October 1854, where they issued both silver dollar and tael banknotes. Between 1845 and 1866 many other British banks that were based in

India India, officially the Republic of India, is a country in South Asia. It is the List of countries and dependencies by area, seventh-largest country by area; the List of countries by population (United Nations), most populous country since ...

started setting up offices in cities along the

coastline of China China's coastline covers approximately 14,500 km (around 9,010 mi) from the Bohai gulf in the north to the Gulf of Tonkin in the south. Most of the northern half is low lying, although some of the mountains and hills of Northeast China ...

such as

Guangzhou Guangzhou, Chinese postal romanization, previously romanized as Canton or Kwangchow, is the Capital city, capital and largest city of Guangdong Provinces of China, province in South China, southern China. Located on the Pearl River about nor ...

and Hong Kong along the

Pearl River Delta The Pearl River Delta Metropolitan Region is the low-lying area surrounding the Pearl River estuary, where the Pearl River flows into the South China Sea. Referred to as the Guangdong–Hong Kong–Macao Greater Bay Area in official documents, ...

and Shanghai along the

Yangtze River Delta The Yangtze Delta or Yangtze River Delta (YRD), once known as the Shanghai Economic Zone, is a megalopolis generally comprising the Wu-speaking areas of Shanghai, southern Jiangsu, northern Zhejiang, southern Anhui. The area lies in the he ...

. Among these Indian-based banks were the Agra and United Services Bank (established in 1853, but went bankrupt in 1866), the

Asiatic Banking Corporation The issue of banknotes of the Hong Kong dollar is governed in the Special Administrative Region of Hong Kong by the Hong Kong Monetary Authority (HKMA), the governmental currency board and central bank of Hong Kong. Under licence from the HKMA, ...

, the Chartered Mercantile Bank of India, London and China (established in 1853), the Bank of Hindustan, China and Japan, and the

Chartered Bank of India, Australia and China The Chartered Bank of India, Australia and China (informally The Chartered Bank) was a bank incorporated in London in 1853 by Scotsman James Wilson, under a Royal Charter from Queen Victoria.

(established in 1857). The

Comptoir d'Escompte de Paris The Comptoir national d'escompte de Paris (; CNEP), from 1854 to 1889 Comptoir d'escompte de Paris (CEP), was a major French bank active from 1848 to 1966. The CEP was created by decree on 10 March 1848 by the French Provisional Government, in ...

from

France France, officially the French Republic, is a country located primarily in Western Europe. Overseas France, Its overseas regions and territories include French Guiana in South America, Saint Pierre and Miquelon in the Atlantic Ocean#North Atlan ...

also started operating in China during this era. These banks functioned as the main financiers of contemporary trade between the

(especially Qing China) and the West (Europe, North America, South America, and Australia). By the year 1866 these early British banks had all opened up branches in the Chinese harbour towns of

, Hong Kong, and Shanghai. The geographic position of the latter of these ports gave it a particularly advantageous position as it is located in the Yangtze River Delta and the Grand Canal, meaning that goods that went through this port would be able to reach the entirety of China. The offices of these banks were all concentrated in an area of Shanghai known as the Bund. In the beginning the need for the services of these foreign banks in China was restricted to only trade

opium Opium (also known as poppy tears, or Lachryma papaveris) is the dried latex obtained from the seed Capsule (fruit), capsules of the opium poppy ''Papaver somniferum''. Approximately 12 percent of opium is made up of the analgesic alkaloid mor ...

from British India into Chinese territory and exports of

Chinese tea Chinese teas can be classified into six distinctive categories: White tea, white, Green tea, green, Yellow tea, yellow, Oolong tea, oolong, Black tea, black and Post-fermented tea, post-fermented. Others add categories for scented and compressed t ...

to markets across the entire world. Because tea could be exported during the summer months, and as opium imports became increasingly restricted by the government of the Qing dynasty, many of these early Anglo-Indian banks in China went bankrupt or had to be reorganised. The Oriental Bank Corporation, which was the first foreign bank to conduct its business in China by opening a local branch, also opened up a branch in the Bund where it then started issuing its own banknotes. The British-owned Chartered Mercantile Bank of India, London and China which issued the

banknotes of the Hong Kong dollar The issue of banknotes of the Hong Kong dollar is governed in the Special administrative region, Special Administrative Region of Hong Kong by the Hong Kong Monetary Authority (HKMA), the governmental currency board and central bank of Hong Kong ...

from 1859 until 1892 was later reorganised as the Mercantile Bank of India and stopped operating in China. After the fall of the Qing dynasty and when the Republic of China's rule over the mainland came to an end, the only British Indian bank still operating in China was the Chartered Bank of India, Australia and China. The

had become dependent on its trade with the

Confederate States of America The Confederate States of America (CSA), also known as the Confederate States (C.S.), the Confederacy, or Dixieland, was an List of historical unrecognized states and dependencies, unrecognized breakaway republic in the Southern United State ...

(CSA) and eventually tied its fate to the success of this nation which lost its

war of independence Wars of national liberation, also called wars of independence or wars of liberation, are conflicts fought by nations to gain independence. The term is used in conjunction with wars against foreign powers (or at least those perceived as foreign) ...

in 1865. At the time of the American Civil War the textile mills of the United Kingdom were wholly dependent upon cotton shipped from the Confederate States of America. However the Confederates did not wish to supply cotton to the British unless they were seen as a recognised state which the British government refused; because of this, the British decided to invest more into the cotton industry of India and

Ceylon Sri Lanka, officially the Democratic Socialist Republic of Sri Lanka, also known historically as Ceylon, is an island country in South Asia. It lies in the Indian Ocean, southwest of the Bay of Bengal, separated from the Indian subcontinent, ...

, attempting to create a whole cotton-raising culture overnight to make up for the lack of Confederate cotton. The price of cotton in the United Kingdom went up immensely as the demand could not be met with the supply. Speculation in cotton futures at the time started to run rife, of these futures the Asiatic Bank was the principal provider of capital. After the American Civil War ended with a decisive victory for the United States of America in 1865, the Asiatic Bank had to close its doors in 1866 as the cheap cotton from the

Southern United States The Southern United States (sometimes Dixie, also referred to as the Southern States, the American South, the Southland, Dixieland, or simply the South) is List of regions of the United States, census regions defined by the United States Cens ...

was freely available on the British market again, ending the experiment with the production of cotton in British India and Ceylon. All banknotes issued by the Asiatic Bank to circulate in Qing China had an identical design but had different branch names on them. The banknotes issued by these early Anglo-Indian banks which did business in the Qing dynasty between 1845 and 1870 are today exceedingly rare and are only seldom offered, making them beyond the reach of the average banknote collector due to their scarcity. The quantity of paper money channeled into Chinese monetary traffic by these Anglo-Indian banks was comparatively small and in some cases exceedingly minor which explains their current rarity.

Later British banks

The second biggest British bank in China was during the Qing dynasty was the

, which was originally formed in

British India The provinces of India, earlier presidencies of British India and still earlier, presidency towns, were the administrative divisions of British governance in South Asia. Collectively, they have been called British India. In one form or another ...

by a

Royal Charter A royal charter is a formal grant issued by a monarch under royal prerogative as letters patent. Historically, they have been used to promulgate public laws, the most famous example being the English Magna Carta (great charter) of 1215, but ...

issued under the reign of

Queen Victoria of the United Kingdom Victoria (Alexandrina Victoria; 24 May 1819 – 22 January 1901) was Queen of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland from 20 June 1837 until her death in January 1901. Her reign of 63 years and 216 days, which was longer than th ...

in 1857. In 1858 the Chartered Bank of India, Australia and China opened an office in the British crown colony of Hong Kong and in 1861 the Chartered Bank of India, Australia and China was granted the right to issue banknotes for Hong Kong. Sizable portions of some of its early business involved the discounting of bills for the export of the narcotic opium from British India to the Qing dynasty which generated a significant amount of profit. From 1861 the Chartered Bank of India, Australia and China was granted the ability to produce Notes Payable to Bearer on Demand at all of their offices. The banknotes produced by the Chartered Bank of India, Australia and China were at all times within the safeguards obligated by the colonial British banking regulations and were generally met with great acceptance in Hong Kong and China, with a notable exception being the city of Shanghai, where the local

Han Chinese The Han Chinese, alternatively the Han people, are an East Asian people, East Asian ethnic group native to Greater China. With a global population of over 1.4 billion, the Han Chinese are the list of contemporary ethnic groups, world's la ...

population was known for holding a prejudice against foreign-produced paper money. This negative perception of foreign paper money was in part because of the refusal of the imperial Chinese Customs House stationed there to accept them as valid currency in payment of dues. As a result of this negative bias by the authorities, there was never a large amount of foreign banknotes in circulation in Shanghai. With the sole exception of Shanghai, the

fiat money Fiat money is a type of government-issued currency that is not backed by a precious metal, such as gold or silver, nor by any other tangible asset or commodity. Fiat currency is typically designated by the issuing government to be legal tende ...

issued by the Chartered Bank of India, Australia and China, which may have been circulating in small quantities, was highly regarded by the Chinese public. The National Bank of China Limited was an institution of which today only very little is known. The very existence of this bank would not have been known if it were not for the discovery of several salesman's samples in the beginning of the 21st century which mention its existence. It is known to have been operating in British Hong Kong with an additional branch in the city of Shanghai. Richard von Glahn reports that the National Bank of China Limited was established by the British in colonial Hong Kong in 1891 and disbanded in 1911. At the time of its disestablishment the National Bank of China Limited had a minor amount of paid-up capital worth only £600,000. The banknotes of this bank in circulation were always small in number. Upon closing its doors permanently all banknotes produced by the bank seemed to have been fully accounted for, which is a most unusual thing to happen in China; this explains the virtual non-existence of the National Bank of China Limited today. The central government of the Qing dynasty only attempted to regulate Chinese banks and its currency near the end of the dynasty. By the time that the Qing started finally implementing financial reforms, China was beholden to the mercy of foreign powers; because of this the issue of foreign banknotes in China and restrictions on foreign banking and foreign banks (including British banks) in general were generally not made.

The Hongkong and Shanghai Banking Corporation

The banknotes produced by the

(

) had seen extensive circulation in the territory of the Qing dynasty from the 1870s and later. In 1864 the Hongkong and Shanghai Banking Corporation was established by the Scottish Thomas Sutherland to finance Far East trade and would later grow to become both the largest and most influential of all the foreign banks during the Qing dynasty era. The

Traditional Chinese characters Traditional Chinese characters are a standard set of Chinese character forms used to written Chinese, write Chinese languages. In Taiwan, the set of traditional characters is regulated by the Ministry of Education (Taiwan), Ministry of Educat ...

for the Hongkong and Shanghai Banking Corporation were ( zh, t=, poj=, l=, c=, s=, p=Huìfēng Yínháng, j=Wui⁶fung¹ Ngan⁴hong⁴, which the British pronounced as ''Wayfung'' after the Cantonese pronunciation). These Chinese characters could be translated as "abundant remittances". Over the following years the HSBC became a banking leader in East and Southeast Asia. This happened because the Hongkong and Shanghai Banking Corporation was a key player in many major events in the region, such as acting as banker for the

Hong Kong government The Government of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region (commonly known as the Hong Kong Government or HKSAR Government) is the Executive (government), executive authorities of Hong Kong. It was established on 1 July 1997, following the ...

from 1880 onwards, establishing the first bank in the Kingdom of Siam in 1888 where it printed the first banknotes of the Siamese tical, and overseeing the management of

British colonial The British Overseas Territories (BOTs) or alternatively referred to as the United Kingdom Overseas Territories (UKOTs) are the fourteen territories with a constitutional and historical link with the United Kingdom that, while not forming p ...

government accounts in Qing China,

Singapore Singapore, officially the Republic of Singapore, is an island country and city-state in Southeast Asia. The country's territory comprises one main island, 63 satellite islands and islets, and one outlying islet. It is about one degree ...

, and other areas of influence. In an advertisement in the

North-China Herald The ''North China Daily News'' (in Chinese: ''Zilin Xibao''), was an English-language newspaper in Shanghai, China, called the most influential foreign newspaper of its time. History The paper was founded as the weekly ''North-China Herald'' ...

of 17 February 1876 the Hongkong and Shanghai Banking Corporation reported to have a paid-up capital of five million dollars and a reserved fund of one hundred thousand dollars while at the time it operated branches in eight different countries, while in China it had branches in

Tianjin Tianjin is a direct-administered municipality in North China, northern China on the shore of the Bohai Sea. It is one of the National Central City, nine national central cities, with a total population of 13,866,009 inhabitants at the time of the ...

, Shanghai,

Fuzhou Fuzhou is the capital of Fujian, China. The city lies between the Min River (Fujian), Min River estuary to the south and the city of Ningde to the north. Together, Fuzhou and Ningde make up the Eastern Min, Mindong linguistic and cultural regi ...

Yantai Yantai, formerly known as Chefoo, is a coastal prefecture-level city on the Shandong Peninsula in northeastern Shandong province of the People's Republic of China. Lying on the southern coast of the Bohai Strait, Yantai borders Qingdao ...

, and

Xiamen Xiamen,), also known as Amoy ( ; from the Zhangzhou Hokkien pronunciation, zh, c=, s=, t=, p=, poj=Ē͘-mûi, historically romanized as Amoy, is a sub-provincial city in southeastern Fujian, People's Republic of China, beside the Taiwan Stra ...

. The quantity of banknotes of the Hongkong and Shanghai Banking Corporation made the amounts produced by other foreign banking corporations in China at the time look minuscule by comparison. The Hongkong and Shanghai Banking Corporation produced the banknotes of the Hong Kong dollar during its colonial era. The Shanghai branch of the Hongkong and Shanghai Banking Corporation was established only briefly after the bank opened its headquarters in the British colony of Hong Kong. The general manager of the Shanghai branch was a Scotsman named

David MacLean David John Maclean, Baron Blencathra, (born 16 May 1953) is a Conservative Party life peer. He was the Member of Parliament (MP) for Penrith and The Border from 1983 to 2010. Early and later life Born in Scotland, Maclean was educated at ...

who fulfilled his role between 1865 and 1873 and managed to convince the Chinese

Imperial Maritime Customs The Chinese Maritime Customs Service was a Chinese governmental tax collection agency and information service from its founding in 1854 until it split in 1949 into services operating in the Republic of China on Taiwan, and in the People's Republ ...

to deposit all its incoming revenue with the Hongkong and Shanghai Banking Corporation, which proved to be a very profitable endeavour for the British bank. HSBC soon established new branches wherever the Imperial Maritime Customs had one of its local offices. Afterwards the Hongkong and Shanghai Banking Corporation would find itself branching out beyond customs as it would expand in the businesses of money deposits and lending money to the Chinese government, collecting war indemnities on behalf of the British government, financing the construction of railways, and lending money to the

military of the Qing dynasty The Qing dynasty (1644–1912) was established by conquest and maintained by armed force. The founding emperors personally organized and led the armies, and the continued cultural and political legitimacy of the dynasty depended on their abilit ...

, which was fighting an expensive campaign against warlords in the north of China. The many branches of the bank issued their own banknotes, which due to the position and positive reputation of the Hongkong and Shanghai Banking Corporation were in great demand across China. During the 19th century until the breakout of

World War I World War I or the First World War (28 July 1914 – 11 November 1918), also known as the Great War, was a World war, global conflict between two coalitions: the Allies of World War I, Allies (or Entente) and the Central Powers. Fighting to ...

the United Kingdom closely cooperated with the

German Empire The German Empire (),; ; World Book, Inc. ''The World Book dictionary, Volume 1''. World Book, Inc., 2003. p. 572. States that Deutsches Reich translates as "German Realm" and was a former official name of Germany. also referred to as Imperia ...

in China to balance out the expansionist influences of the French and Russian spheres of interest in China. As a result, the Hongkong and Shanghai Banking Corporation worked closely and very successfully with the

. By the turn of the 20th century HSBC had become the most important foreign banking company in imperial China, leading to a great variety of banknotes being issued by the bank during this era. As the shareholders of the Hongkong and Shanghai Banking Corporation had only very limited liability for the banknotes emissed by the company, HSBC was required to hold ⅓ specie reserve in their vaults at any given time. These banknotes were thus always secured to be paid out to the bearer and never faced being defaulted. The Hongkong and Shanghai Banking Corporation had effectively set the Shanghai foreign currency exchange rates, a fact which shows the extent of its sizable and growing dominant role in Chinese financial matters during the Qing dynasty and early Republican eras. The role of the Hongkong and Shanghai Banking Corporation as custodian of the official finds of the Chinese government would continue until this task was assumed by the

Central Bank of China The Central Bank of the Republic of China (Taiwan), known from 1924 to 2007 as the Central Bank of China and still referred to under the acronym CBC, is the central bank of Taiwan. Originally founded in 1924 in Guangzhou, the CBC was expel ...

and responsibilities were handled by the Chinese themselves; this was done after the Chinese currency reform enacted in 1935.

Banknotes produced by French banks

Prior to the outbreak of the first world war, the

operated two banking corporations in China which were granted banknote issue rights by the Chinese government; these were the Banque de l'Indochine and the

Banque Industrielle de Chine The Banque Industrielle de Chine (, , abbr. BIC; zh, 中法實業銀行) was a French bank with its main activities in China and French Indochina. It was created in 1913, expanded rapidly, but closed in 1921 because of the political context in ...

The was created in 1875 to serve as the financial arm of France in

Southeast Asia Southeast Asia is the geographical United Nations geoscheme for Asia#South-eastern Asia, southeastern region of Asia, consisting of the regions that are situated south of China, east of the Indian subcontinent, and northwest of the Mainland Au ...

, and more particularly in

French Indochina French Indochina (previously spelled as French Indo-China), officially known as the Indochinese Union and after 1941 as the Indochinese Federation, was a group of French dependent territories in Southeast Asia from 1887 to 1954. It was initial ...

. After the turn of the century in 1900, the business interests of the were shifted from India to focus more on the Chinese market, particularly in southern China. In China the collected war indemnities for the Boxer Rebellion on behalf of the French government, where it served as the sole French representative in handling the Boxer indemnity. After the French sphere of influence established in China as southern China, the was tasked with taking over international trade between the French Republic and all of Qing China. In addition to its monopoly on issuing banknotes in French Indochina, the also circulated its banknotes in neighbouring Chinese provinces, most notably in the provinces of

Yunnan Yunnan; is an inland Provinces of China, province in Southwestern China. The province spans approximately and has a population of 47.2 million (as of 2020). The capital of the province is Kunming. The province borders the Chinese provinces ...

and

Guizhou ) , image_skyline = , image_caption = , image_map = Guizhou in China (+all claims hatched).svg , mapsize = 275px , map_alt = Map showing the location of Guizhou Province , map_caption = Map s ...

. The was assigned a position of priority in the financing of the infrastructure of the

French concession The Shanghai French Concession was a foreign concession in Shanghai, China from 1849 until 1943. For much of the 20th century, the area covered by the former French Concession remained the premier residential and retail district of Shanghai. ...

in Shanghai's International Settlement, where some of its notable accomplishments include the Shanghai Electric Power Company and the Shanghai Tramways. The opened its first branch in China in 1899 in Shanghai and quickly opened more branches in Beijing, Hankou,

Kunming Kunming is the capital and largest city of the province of Yunnan in China. The political, economic, communications and cultural centre of the province, Kunming is also the seat of the provincial government. During World War II, Kunming was a Ch ...

, and Tianjin. All of these branches produced banknotes denominated in dollars for local circulation in China. At the Shanghai branch the French had made an attempt at issuing banknotes denominated in taels but this programme was almost immediately abandoned as non-remunerative. The banknotes produced by the were tri-lingual, printed in

, and

, making them the only foreign bank to employ three languages on their paper money in China. Denominations on banknotes produced by the were described in both

French franc The franc (; , ; currency sign, sign: F or Fr), also commonly distinguished as the (FF), was a currency of France. Between 1360 and 1641, it was the name of coins worth 1 livre tournois and it remained in common parlance as a term for this amoun ...

s and Mexican piastres. These banknotes circulated in relatively small quantities in China until 1940, and consequently tend to be quite rare today.

Banknotes produced by Japanese banks

Bank of Taiwan

After the

ended, the Chinese were forced to give up the island of

to the Japanese as a part of the

Treaty of Shimonoseki The , also known as the Treaty of Maguan () in China or the in Japan, was signed at the hotel in Shimonoseki, Japan, on April 17, 1895, between the Empire of Japan and Qing China. It was a treaty that ended the First Sino-Japanese War, ...

. Under Japanese rule the island was run as a colony and soon Japanese institutions were being established for the benefit of the

. In 1899 the

Bank of Taiwan The Bank of Taiwan (BOT; ) is a commercial bank headquartered in Taipei, Taiwan. It was established in 1897-1899 as a Japanese policy institution or "special bank", similarly as the Nippon Kangyo Bank (est. 1897), Hokkaido Takushoku Bank (est. ...

was established and had a starting

of ¥ 5,000,000. The goals of the Bank of Taiwan were to provide capital for the export of Taiwanese raw materials to Japan proper and to expand Japanese trade with China through its branch offices in

Mainland China "Mainland China", also referred to as "the Chinese mainland", is a Geopolitics, geopolitical term defined as the territory under direct administration of the People's Republic of China (PRC) in the aftermath of the Chinese Civil War. In addit ...

. The first mainland Chinese branch of the Bank of Taiwan was opened in Shanghai where in 1905 it issued a series of banknotes denominated in silver dollars. The issuing of these paper notes also required permission from the imperial Japanese government. In 1906 a series of banknotes was issued consisting of the denominations 1 gold yen, 5 gold yen, 10 gold yen, 50 gold yen, and 100 gold yen. The designs of the banknotes of the Bank of Taiwan were not uniform nor were their sizes; the designs of these banknotes seems to have been dictated by local Chinese customs. Some had a vertical design, such as the banknotes produced by the

(Amoy) and

Shantou Shantou, Chinese postal romanization, alternately romanization of Chinese, romanized as Swatow and sometimes known as Santow, is a prefecture-level city on the eastern coast of Guangdong, China, with a total population of 5,502,031 as of the 20 ...

(Swatow) branches, while those produced at the

(Canton),

Jiujiang Jiujiang, formerly transliterated Kiukiang and Kew-Keang, is a prefecture-level city located on the southern shores of the Yangtze River in northwest Jiangxi Province in the People's Republic of China. It is the second-largest prefecture-level ...

, Shanghai, and

branches were all horizontal, although the general shape of the banknotes and their design patterns also differ between branches. An approximate 10% of all banknotes produced by the Japanese Bank of Taiwan were circulating on mainland China at any given time.

Yokohama Specie Bank

The only truly Japanese banking company to circulate its own banknotes in Qing dynasty era China was the

. The Yokohama Specie Bank was established in 1880 for the international trade Japan had recently been opened to. The bank primarily did business in discounting

, handling in the Japanese foreign exchange market, and in promoting trade with the Chinese Empire. In 1893 the Yokohama Specie Bank opened an office in the Chinese trade port of Shanghai. During the early years of the Yokohama Specie Bank, it survived an

economic recession An economy is an area of the Production (economics), production, Distribution (economics), distribution and trade, as well as Consumption (economics), consumption of Goods (economics), goods and Service (economics), services. In general, it is ...

, after which it received loans from the imperial Japanese government and permission to issue its own paper notes. At first the bank used the

to back the banknotes it put into circulation, but due to global depreciation of silver during the late 19th century, the

Meiji period The was an era of Japanese history that extended from October 23, 1868, to July 30, 1912. The Meiji era was the first half of the Empire of Japan, when the Japanese people moved from being an isolated feudal society at risk of colonizatio ...

imperial Japanese government had turned to using the

for its currency in 1897, using the war indemnity money due to them after the defeat of the Qing dynasty in the First Sino-Japanese War as backing for the new gold yen banknotes. After the first Sino-Japanese and Russo-Japanese Wars, the Yokohama Specie Bank shifted its focus northwards to

where it first took over the

grain trade The grain trade refers to the local and international trade in cereals such as wheat, barley, maize, rice, and other food grains. Grain is an important trade item because it is easily stored and transported with limited spoilage, unlike other agri ...

from the Chinese and later the railroad activities from the Russians. Its branch offices tasked with producing banknotes in Manchuria were located at

Dalian Dalian ( ) is a major sub-provincial port city in Liaoning province, People's Republic of China, and is Liaoning's second largest city (after the provincial capital Shenyang) and the third-most populous city of Northeast China (after Shenyang ...

Harbin Harbin, ; zh, , s=哈尔滨, t=哈爾濱, p=Hā'ěrbīn; IPA: . is the capital of Heilongjiang, China. It is the largest city of Heilongjiang, as well as being the city with the second-largest urban area, urban population (after Shenyang, Lia ...

Yingkou Yingkou ( zh, s=, t=, p=Yíngkǒu) is a coastal prefecture-level city of central southern Liaoning province, People's Republic of China, on the northeastern shore of Liaodong Bay. It is the third-smallest city in Liaoning with a total area of , a ...

(Niuzhuang),

Jinan Jinan is the capital of the province of Shandong in East China. With a population of 9.2 million, it is one of the largest cities in Shandong in terms of population. The area of present-day Jinan has played an important role in the history of ...

Liaoyang Liaoyang ( zh, s=辽阳 , t=遼陽 , p=Liáoyáng) is a prefecture-level city of east-central Liaoning province, China, situated on the Taizi River. It is approximately one hour south of Shenyang, the provincial capital, by car. Liaoyang is hom ...

, Mukden (

Shenyang Shenyang,; ; Mandarin pronunciation: ; formerly known as Fengtian formerly known by its Manchu language, Manchu name Mukden, is a sub-provincial city in China and the list of capitals in China#Province capitals, provincial capital of Liaonin ...

), and

Tieling Tieling ( zh, t=鐵嶺 , s=铁岭 , p=Tiělǐng , l=iron peak) is one of 14 prefecture-level cities in Liaoning province of the People's Republic of China. Tieling is a city where coal mining Coal mining is the process of resource extract ...

. These offices were initially established in support of Japanese military personnel stationed in Manchuria. Additional branches of the Yokohama Specie Bank in China were located in Beijing, Tianjin, Qingdao, Shanghai, and Hankou. Although the issues of paper money by the bank were small and managed in a good manner, the banknotes principally served the Japanese population in China and Manchuria, as the Chinese people rejected them due to resentments they harboured over Japanese encroachment in their country. The 1903 silver yen notes produced by the Niuzhuang branch played an important role in financing local

soy bean The soybean, soy bean, or soya bean (''Glycine max'') is a species of legume native to East Asia, widely grown for its edible bean. Soy is a staple crop, the world's most grown legume, and an important animal feed. Soy is a key source of f ...

production in the region of Manchuria. By 1907 the Yokohama Specie Bank's paper notes enjoyed circulation throughout all of Manchuria. These banknotes were circulated by the branch in the port city of Dalian. Peak circulation of the bank's paper notes was reached in 1911 when a total of 7,200,000 dollars in banknotes were paid out. Over its many years of operating in China, the Yokohama Specie Bank issued a large variety of paper notes. At different times it issued banknotes that were denominated in taels, dollars, silver yen, gold yen, big money, small money, local currency and even fractional small denominational sen notes. All banknotes produced by the bank were printed by the Printing Bureau of the Imperial Japanese Government. Today all banknotes produced by the Yokohama Specie Bank during the late Qing dynasty period between 1902 and 1911 are rare and bring exceedingly high prices on the private collector's market, the sole exception being the 1 dollar banknote which was issued in 1902; this banknote occasionally becomes available to collectors. In general Yokohama Specie Bank varieties provide private collectors with a rather wide field from which they could build up a notaphilic collection. The problem many collectors of banknotes today face is that, due to tight management by the Japanese and a near total banknote redemption, very few of these paper notes remained unredeemed, making them relatively rare today.

Banknotes produced by Russian banks

Russo-Chinese Bank

The Russo-Chinese Bank () was founded on 5 December 1895 in the Russian Embassy in Paris as a joint-venture, from Russian and

. Approximately a year after it was established the Russo-Chinese Bank received a contract from the government of the Qing dynasty for the construction of the Chinese Eastern Railway in the three provinces making up Manchuria. This venture into Manchurian railways proved to be so successful that by the end 1902, the Russo-Chinese Bank had achieved the status of being the second-largest foreign banking corporation in all of the Chinese Empire. The total of all British bank investments in 1902 (including the Hongkong and Shanghai Banking Corporation) added up to 33% of the investments from foreign banks into the Chinese economy, while the Russo-Chinese Bank by itself managed to account for as much as 31.3%. The different branches of the Russo-Chinese Bank each fulfilled different roles as the Beijing office was essentially exclusively engaged in political affairs with the imperial Chinese government, while the Shanghai office was mostly invested in the mercantile exchange business. The Russo-Chinese bank enjoyed a large amount of prosperity from its Manchurian railroad charter which allowed the bank to issue two series of banknotes. In 1901 it issued banknotes denominated in

s and a second series was issued in 1907, denominated in

tael Tael ( ),"Tael" entry
at the

After the Chinese Eastern Railway started opening for business, the Russo-Chinese Bank collected fares for both passengers and goods in Mexican dollar, Mexican pesos due to the former wide circulation of the Spanish silver dollar in

times through trade with the

as part of the

in the

that minted the silver coins from

. However, after the railway was fully operational, the company preferred to exclusively handle fees in

s. As an effect of the Russo-Japanese War, the Russo-Chinese Bank lost a majority of its funds as it had invested heavily in the Military history of the Russian Empire, Russian military, leading it to merge with various other imperial Russian banking companies operating in China and the Banque du Nord in 1910, becoming the Russo-Asiatic Bank.

Russo-Asiatic Bank

The Russo-Asiatic Bank was created in 1910 out of a series of mergers of the Russo-Chinese Bank with other banks during a reorganisation. This change was fundamentally only a rename as all of its outstanding assets and its business, after the deduction of its war losses, remained completely intact. Under the Russo-Chinese Bank name the bank never enjoyed a large paper note circulation. The bank's final balance sheet, published by the bank's St. Petersburg headquarters, attests to this: the number of banknotes remaining in circulation, outstanding, and unredeemed total only 146,177 banknotes in dollars and 13,766 banknotes in taels. Banknotes that still had the old name of the bank (Russo-Chinese Bank) in circulation had the name crossed out by hand by employees of the bank. After the Bolsheviks took Russia by October Revolution, revolution in 1918, they nationalised all of the Russo-Asiatic Bank's properties in the country partially because the bank had supported the White movement, White Russians against the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic, Bolshevik state. After this the bank moved its headquarters to Paris where it would go bankrupt in 1926 after losing Pound sterling, £5,000,000 while speculating in foreign currency at the Paris financial markets. The Paris branch office then sent out a notification to the Shanghai branch office to close the doors of the establishment, forever ending the Russo-Asiatic Bank's operations in China. Banknotes produced by the East Turkestan branches of the Russo-Asiatic Bank (Kashgar, Yining, and Changuchak) during the Republican period circulating between 1913 and 1924 still prominently depicted imperial Chinese symbols such as the five-fingered dragon on both sides. They were distinguished from banknotes produced by other foreign banking corporations because they were denominated in fixed weights of pure gold, rather than specific monetary units. The banknotes from this era were printed by Bradbury Wilkinson and Company in London, United Kingdom.

Deutsch-Asiatische Bank

The

(DAB) was created on 15 May 1889 and was notable for being the first major non-British foreign banking corporation in China during the Qing dynasty period, and for being the only German bank with the right to issue its own notes in China. The main priority for the was to finance imperials loans requested by the Qing government with a special focus on both railways and mining operations within the sphere of interest held by the

in the province of Shandong. The initial

the paid to the government of the Qing dynasty numbered 5,000,000

tael Tael ( ),"Tael" entry
at the

In 1896 the entered into a cooperation with the Hongkong and Shanghai Banking Corporation (HSBC) to underwrite Chinese government loans aggregating £32,000,000. The money for these government loans was secured by collecting the revenue of the

and taxes collected on Chinese salt. The project, which cost 54,000,000 German gold mark, gold mark, led to the construction of of railways from the city of Qingdao, Kiautschou Bay concession, German Kiautschou to

. Additionally it paid 12,000,000 gold mark for the establishment of new mining operations in Shandong. The bank was later also involved with British, French and Russian interests to build railways outside of the German sphere of interest. The banknotes issued by the were denominated in silver taels and silver dollars. The paper money that the bank was allowed to bring into circulation was tightly controlled by the German imperial government in Berlin and it was always in small quantities. The initial emission of banknotes occurred in 1907 and was strictly controlled by the German government, well managed, and in great demand. The second issue occurred during the Republic of China in 1914 after the banknotes arrived shortly before the Japanese invasion during World War I. Because of the war, only a small number of banknotes actually entered circulation. Although the banknotes of the DAB had no printer's imprint on them, it was generally believed that they were produced in the Leipzig plant of the German printing company Giesecke+Devrient. All banknotes produced by this bank depict the German national personification Germania (personification), Germania alongside the imperial German eagle and a Chinese dragon prominently displayed on them. After the outbreak of

, the was forced to suspend its operations in China. At the time that it had to cease operating in China, an amount of 2,595,968 taels worth of banknotes was circulating. In 1917 the Chinese republican government revoked the bank's privilege to produce its own paper notes for the Chinese market.

International Banking Corporation

The sole American bank to operate in imperial China was the New York City-based International Banking Corporation, which was founded on 1 December 1901 for the purpose of promoting foreign trade with the United States in China and had two series of banknotes issued during both the Qing dynasty and early Republican periods. As the flag of the United States flew over the bank's several branch offices in China, the Chinese people began referring to the red, white, and blue coloured standard as (, 'colourful flag'), and it was not long before the International Banking Corporation itself was referred to as (, 'colourful flag bank') by the people of China. American banking companies did not do business in the Chinese banking field until the very beginning of the 20th century. With none of their own banks in imperial China, all trade remittances of the United States had to go through British banks operating in the country. United States Secretary of State, American Secretary of State John Hay advocated for the Americans to get involved in the Chinese market and obtain a share of it. As the United States had joined the eight-power alliance to put down the

in 1900, Americans felt it only right that they also participate in their share of the Boxer indemnities awarded to foreign powers in China. The first branch office of the International Banking Corporation in China was opened in Shanghai in 1902. In addition to dealing with the Boxer indemnities, the bank was active in granting loans to the government of the Qing dynasty, the largest of these loans being the Huguang Railway loan of 1911. In 1915 the National City Bank of New York had acquired a majority of shares in the International Banking Corporation. On 1 January 1927 the International Banking Corporation was to be entirely superseded by the National City Bank of New York, which took over all branch offices and would continue to operate them under its own brand name. The banknotes issued by the International Banking Corporation were denominated in local currency and were released in denominations of 1 dollar, 5 dollars, 10 dollars, 50 dollars, and 100 dollars in the year 1907. All banknotes featured a pair of globes depicting both the Eastern hemisphere, eastern and western hemispheres, an American eagle, and the Scales of Justice (symbol), scales of Justice. In the first year of its business the International Banking Corporation issued banknotes into circulation worth 202,474 dollars, later increasing this amount to 477,760 at the end of the Qing dynasty period by 1912. During the early Republican era a series of banknotes was released in 1918 which were denominated in taels. The old paper notes issued by the International Banking Corporation were very popular in China and in great demand, and were always redeemed by the bank without being discounted as was very common for other institutions. When called in, the banknotes were canceled by the bank by cutting them in half. Many banknotes of the International Banking Corporation today found in collections were altered by gluing the two halves together and tend to bear mismatched serial numbers as a result; these banknotes are worth very little when compared to unaltered specimens found today.

Netherlands Trading Society

The Netherlands Trading Society (Dutch language, Dutch: or ''NHM'') created its first branch office in China in 1903 on

in the port city of Shanghai. In comparison with other foreign banking corporations operating in China, the Netherlands Trading Society was not a large banking company. However, the bank handled a large variety of different trade businesses with the Chinese. While the Netherlands Trading Society's presence in China was small or served as a training base for the future generation of Chinese bankers, many of these native businessmen later went on to form their own private banking companies during the Qing and Republican eras. The number of banknotes produced by the Netherlands Trading Society in circulation in China was at all times relatively small in quantity because Dutch law had a substantial requirement for reserves to be held to back up the paper money issued that went into circulation. In 1909 the Netherlands Trading Society issued banknotes with the denominations 1 dollar, 5 dollars, and 10 dollars, and later under the Republic of China government in 1922 banknotes with denominations of 100 dollars and 500 dollars were issued. All banknotes issued by the Netherlands Trading Society in China had a principal vignette that depicted a Chinese warrior bearing a sword, clad in Chinese armour, and an ancient stone bridge.

Currency units used on paper money during the late Qing period

The denominations of the Qing dynasty coinage, contemporary coinage were chaotic with different standards being used across regions, making it confusing to exchange between areas due to the wide range of systems and denominations used to categorise the many coinages of the Qing. There was likewise a wide range of types of paper notes. The traditional copper-allow cash was reflected in cash notes (). Some of these banknotes used the traditional government-mandated exchange rate of 1,000 ''Chinese cash (currency unit), wén'' per String of cash coins (currency unit), string of cash coins ( or ) in a system for

known as (), while others used differing local exchange rates, like the Eastern cash or () of the Liaoning, Fengtian province, with 160 cash coins per string, or the ''metropolitan cash'' () from

, which had an exchange rate of 500 cash coins per string. Local banknotes usually reflected local exchange rates. During the late Qing dynasty Japanese mon (currency), Japanese cash coins circulated in China, as well as cash coins from earlier dynasties of different shapes and sizes at different exchange rates. On the local markets, the exchange rates even deviated from the fixed denominations, as had been the case with cash coins of substandard quality for an extended amount of time. The silver currency was reflected in silver notes (), and also in other types of paper money there were great differences in the conversion rate depending on the region where the banknotes were traded or used in. In Beijing, the imperial '' Kuping tael'' (), which had a standard weight of 37.5 grams, the exchange rate was used side by side with the local ''metropolitan rate'' which was known as the (), while the Shanghai tael () was used on banknotes issued by both the Huifeng Bank () and the Shanghai Tongshang Yinhang (). The banknotes of the Hongkong and Shanghai Banking Corporation were principally denominated in Chinese dollars; however, the tael,

, and various currencies based upon the local Chinese dollar were also employed as denominations. The denominations on the silver yuan banknotes () were the most standardised, but exchange rates still differed on the individual Chinese markets where they circulated, depending on the local value of the silver yuan coins. The imperial government attempted to clarify this chaotic situation with the Statutes for Paper Bills () decreed in the year 1909. For silver currencies the standardised government currency units were 1 () = 10 Mace (unit), mace () = 100 candareen () = 1000 Cash (unit), cash ( / ) for taels, which were based on units of weight, while the round silver coins were standardised at 1 yuan or dollar ( / ) = 10 Jiao (currency), jiao or hou ( / ) = 100 Fen (currency), fen or sin ( / ) = 1000 cash ( / ), and 1 yuan was worth a coin with a weight of 0.72 taels as standardized in 1910.

Denominations on banknotes of foreign banks in Qing China

List of note issuing foreign banks in imperial and early republican China:

Banknotes as a percentage of the Chinese money stock during the late Qing dynasty

Chinese historian Peng Xinwei stated that in 1900, privately produced banknotes made up only 3% of the total volume of Chinese currency stock. This number would (according to Niv Horesh) be unlikely to surpass 6% if banknotes denominated in silver currencies were taken into account (these banknotes were produced by government banks and modern banking corporations). Foreign banks operating in China generally did not disclose the volume of banknotes issued by them circulating in China proper; the fact that they did not openly disclose this resulted in inflated estimates thereof over the years. For this reason Horesh states that it would be very implausible to assume that the ratio of all banknotes as part of the entirety of the Chinese money stock was any significant number higher than 10% even as late as 1900. Meanwhile, during this same period the Cash (Chinese coin), traditional cast copper-alloy cash coins made up only 17.78% of the total Chinese currency stock; the percentage representing cash coins would only decrease from this point onwards. Meanwhile, Peng estimated that foreign trade dollars circulating in China (which mostly included the silver

) made up 25% of the total Chinese currency stock by the 1900s. The Spanish dollar#Asia, Mexican or Spanish silver dollar had been in wide circulation since

times, due to past Maritime Silk Road trade with the

as part of the

in the

that minted the silver coins from

or Bolivia or Peru and flowed through the

. This trend was actually the opposite in the Western world and Japanese Empire, Japan where the global introduction of government steam-minted coinages halted the spread of New Spain, Mexican-mined silver pesos. This effect was most notable in North and South America as well as the

. At the same time silver was being diffused from the

and there were major discoveries of large silver deposits in the United States and West Africa.

Gallery

Notes

References

Sources

* Dai Zhiqiang (戴志強), ed. (2008). ''Zhongguo qianbi shoucang jianshang quanji'' (中國錢幣收藏鑒賞全集) (Changchun: Jilin chuban jituan). (in

). * Albert Feuerwerker, Feuerwerker, A. (1958) ''China's early industrialization: sheng Hsuan-huai (1844–1916) and the mandarin enterprise.'' Publisher: Harvard University Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts, Cambridge, Massachusetts. * Gabrisch, Karl (1990). ''Geld aus Tibet: Sammlung Dr. Karl Gabrisch; Ausstellung des Münzkabinetts der Stadt Winterthur'' (Winterthur: Departement für Kulturelles; Rikon: Tibet-Institut). (in German language, German). * * * * * Meng Pengxing (孟彭興) (1998). "Cong feiqian dao jiaozi huizi (), in Zhang Dainian (張岱年), ed. Zhongguo wenshi baike (中國文史百科) (Hangzhou: Zhejiang renmin chubanshe), Vol. 1, 414. (in

). * * The book has been translated into English by Edward 11. Kaplan as A Monetary History of China (Bellingham, WA: Western Washington, 1994). * Peng Xinwei (彭信威) (1994) ''A monetary history of China'' (translated by Edward H. Kaplan). Western Washington University (Bellingham, Washington, Bellingham, Washington (state), Washington). * Xie Tianyu (謝天宇), ed. (2005). ''Zhongguo qianbi shoucang yu jianshang quanshu'' (中國錢幣收藏與鑒賞全書) (

: Tianjin guji chubanshe), Vol. 2, 508. (in

). * Zhou Fazeng (周發增), Chen Longtao (陳隆濤), Qi Jixiang (齊吉祥), ed. (1998). ''Zhongguo gudai zhengzhi zhidu shi cidian'' (中國古代政治制度史辭典) (

: Shoudu shifan daxue chubanshe), Pages 372, 375, 380, 381, 382. (in

). {{Chinese currency and coinage Banknotes of China Economy of the Qing dynasty Chinese numismatics

History

and other early Qing paper money

Xianfeng era paper money

Foreign banks and the currency reforms of the late 19th and early 20th centuries

Establishing a national bank

List of banknotes denominated in copper-alloy cash coins issued during the Xianfeng era

List of banknotes denominated in silver taels issued during the Xianfeng era

Banknotes produced by Belgian banks

Banknotes produced by British banks

Early British Indian banks in China

Later British banks

The Hongkong and Shanghai Banking Corporation

Banknotes produced by French banks

Banknotes produced by Japanese banks

Bank of Taiwan

Yokohama Specie Bank

Banknotes produced by Russian banks

Russo-Chinese Bank

Russo-Asiatic Bank

Deutsch-Asiatische Bank

International Banking Corporation

Netherlands Trading Society

Currency units used on paper money during the late Qing period

Denominations on banknotes of foreign banks in Qing China

Banknotes as a percentage of the Chinese money stock during the late Qing dynasty

Gallery

See also

Notes

References

Sources