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| The Large-Scale Cross-border Flow of Silver in Chinese History |
| WANG Xin, MENG Yucong, GUO Dongsheng
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Research Bureau, People's Bank of China;
Ruimiao (Hainan) Private Equity Fund Management Co., Ltd; Currency, Gold and Silver Bureau (Security Bureau), People's Bank of China |
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Abstract The period from the monetization of silver to the establishment of the silver standard in China involved a long process of development. After the middle and late Ming dynasty, silver became the main currency in circulation, and did not withdraw from the stage of history until the Republic of China's legal tender reform (1935), which remained in force for approximately 400 years. However, during this time, China's silver output was small and thus the silver in circulation was mainly imported from abroad. Consequently, the cross-border flow of silver had a substantial impact on China's silver monetization process, money supply and economic development.
After the discovery of geography, China gradually joined the international division of labor and trade system, and several large-scale cross-border flows of silver occurred. Thus, from the mid-Ming dynasty to the mid-Qing dynasty (from the mid-16th century to the early 19th century), China had a long-term surplus in foreign trade and a large-scale inflow of silver. Initially, silver was initially mainly imported through the Spanish Philippines and Japan, and then mainly from Europe, and latterly mainly from the Americas. The two representative estimates of the inflow of silver during this period are approximately 1.6 billion liang (1 liang=37.301 g) and 600 million liang. In contrast, from the 1930s to the middle of the 1830s, due to the import of opium and the worldwide decline in silver mining, there was a silver outflow of an estimated at 100-300 million liang. From the mid-19th century to the 1920s, major countries worldwide successively reformed their monetary systems and implemented the gold standard, which led to a sharp drop in the international silver price and a large amount of silver flowing into China. Much of this inflow was direct investment from Western countries or foreign debts or loans acquired by the Chinese government to build infrastructure and mining. As a result, China's key industries and its economic system were reliant on other countries. In modern times, due to China's war reparations, there was a net outflow of more than 1.3 billion liang of silver, including over 1 billion liang from 1895 to 1914. In the 1930s, Western countries successively abandoned the gold standard and the United States implemented the silver purchase program. Thus, the international silver price rose sharply and there was large-scale outflow from China that reached 1.03 billion liang from 1934 to 1938, leading directly to the collapse of the silver standard.
The large-scale cross-border flow of silver in China has been influenced by changes in domestic and foreign monetary systems, the development of China's international trade and investment, war reparations, policy adjustments of other countries and other factors. In addition, the cross-border flow of silver has had a direct and significant impact on domestic silver stock. Domestic and foreign scholars have estimated that the stock of silver in the Ming dynasty, Qing dynasty and the Republic of China (1912-1949) was equivalent to the total mining output of silver in China from the Tang dynasty to the Qing dynasty, i.e., less than 560 million liang, which is less than most scholars' estimates of the inflow of silver from the middle of the Ming dynasty to the middle of the Qing dynasty. From the 16th to 17th centuries, China's stock of silver increased from 150 million liang to 250 million liang. In the 1640s (the late Ming dynasty, 1911 (the late Qing dynasty), and 1933 (when the Chinese government abandoned the weight of silver liang in favor of a standard weight of silver yuan, a process known as “fei liang gai yuan”), China's silver stock was 760 million liang, 1.33 billion liang and 2.21 billion liang, respectively. Scholars' estimates of how much silver was used as money vary widely, depending on the proportion of silver stock that was circulated.
There has been much research by domestic and foreign scholars on the cross-border flow of silver in different periods of Chinese history. This paper reviews the literature to provide a summary of the cross-border flow of silver in China over the past 2,000 years, analyzes the main reasons for the cross-border flow of silver in different periods, and lists representative estimates of the flow and stock of silver in different periods. The results of this analysis show that the cross-border flow of silver in China has made it difficult to control the country's monetary aggregate, and has profoundly affected the stable development of China's economy and society. This highlights the vital importance of countries' maintaining the right to regulate their currency issuance and circulation. Under the current credit monetary system, various countries' issuance and circulation of currencies are not limited by the amount of precious metals in their possession. However, cross-border capital flows also significantly affect countries' economic and financial operations. As such, it remains important to perform a detailed study of cross-border flows of silver in China and other countries.
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Published: 03 August 2023
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