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The issuance of currency also refers to the issuance of banknotes, which is very simple to issue and can be sent out after printing, but if it is not well controlled, it will become like the treasure banknotes of the previous Ming Dynasty, and it will depreciate to the point that it is not as good as waste paper. In fact, the current banks are still still money banks, and it is indeed unrealistic to involve the issuance of banknotes before even the business of exchange in other places has been carried out. What's more, the time is not yet ripe for the issuance of banknotes.

There have been many examples of failed issuance of new currencies in Chinese history, the most famous of which are Wang Mang's monetary reform and Zhu Yuanzhang's issuance of the Ming Treasure Banknote. The occurrence of new currencies is generally based on politics. On the basis of government credit, once issued, it must be unified before and after, and it must not be changed overnight, and whether the final restructuring can succeed mainly lies in three aspects.

First of all, we cannot rush to achieve results, we cannot expect the new currency to replace the old currency all at once, and we cannot use the new currency to force the use of the new currency to prohibit the old currency by executive order. Because although China's monetary system lagged behind that of the West at this time, it had also developed for thousands of years, and copper coins and silver had penetrated into all aspects of social life and become accustomed to it. For example, the silver dollar promoted by Geng Jingzhong before, it is also a big silver dollar, and the weight is one tael, but the silver ingots are replaced by good-looking and easy-to-use silver dollars, which have not changed at all, so they cannot be regarded as new currency. At any time, even if the new currency has been issued, it is unlikely that the old currency will be completely withdrawn immediately. The new currency cannot immediately occupy the circulating market, and there is a large vacuum between the old and new currencies, which must have a long transition period. Old and new currencies are mixed together. In order to make the new currency gradually accepted by the market, and finally fully occupy the market.

The second is that the use and conversion of the new currency must be simple and convenient. At the very least, it should not be more cumbersome to use than the old currency, and of course the conversion between the old and new currencies should be simple and convenient. The last rule is that the issuance of new currency should not be overflowing, and too many new currencies should not be issued into the market at once, but only slowly increased. At the same time, it is necessary to gradually recycle the old currency so that the amount of money circulating in the market is always kept within a stable range. Only in this way will there be no chaos in the inflation market. Other than that. Politics. The government must also recognize the full circulation of the new currency in all areas of society, and the most important tax revenue must accept the new currency.

Wang Mang of the Western Han Dynasty made the first two mistakes in the monetary reform, during his reign Wang Mang carried out a total of four currency reforms, an average of less than three years of currency reform. There are as many as 28 currencies in circulation, and it is very difficult to convert them into each other, and the market is at a loss. Therefore, it also caused inconvenience in the circulation of new currency, and Wang Mang forced the market to accept new currency by administrative means, but the laws of the market could not be transferred by human will, and the result could only cause chaos in the monetary system; And also overdrawn out of government. The creditworthiness of the government. The failure of the monetary reform is no longer inevitable.

The main reason for the failure of Zhu Yuanzhang's Daming treasure banknote issuance was that he made the third mistake. Due to the lack of modern reserve awareness, the issuance of Daming treasure banknotes is flooded and only issued but not received. Neither demarcation nor recycling of old banknotes. As a result, more and more Daming treasure banknotes circulating in the market have become flooded, and the depreciation has become more and more severe. The imperial court only collects a small amount of treasure money or does not collect treasure money at all, and only collects gold, silver and copper coins. In this way, the credibility of the treasure banknote is naturally deteriorating, and in the Zhengde period, the treasure banknote has actually been abolished, after which the Ming Dynasty no longer issued paper money, giving way to the silver standard monetary system.

Although it is not yet possible to directly issue paper money in Fujian, Geng Jingzhong did not give up and stopped, so the voucher with the same function as the paper money was created. Now Geng Jingzhong came up with this voucher, with the function of currency, printed on the denominations marked with one tael, ten taels and one hundred taels, the small ones are ten cents, twenty cents, fifty cents, and the smaller ones are copper coins, just like the coins of later generations, copper coins are also very useful. This voucher is only used in the properties of the palace, and all workers in the industries under the palace can take this voucher to shop at the stores under the palace, and they can get a 20% discount, so that they can quickly drive others to use this voucher. This thing is extremely common in later generations, and the circulation of vouchers of such denominations must be better than piles of silver.

At present, in Fujian, there are 200,000 people who rely on Geng Jingzhong alone to eat. There were 62,000 people in the Mawei Army, and nearly 5,000 people in the various military workshops combined. Gongzhufang is now all over the provinces and counties of Fujian, as well as post offices, schools, salt shops and rice shops and other industries under the royal government, and the total number of workers has reached 20,000.

In addition, the largest are several mines in Longyan and on the periphery of Qiqi Town, two gold mines and accompanying copper mines, and three iron mines, and the number of workers directly reaches 100,000. If we add the family members of these people, according to the calculation of a family of three, the number of people who rely on Geng Jingzhong or the Jingnan palace to support them has reached more than 600,000, which is more than one-tenth of the population of Fujian.

So many people rely on the Jingnan palace to eat, and the salary sent out every month exceeds 500,000 taels, and the military expenditure given by the imperial court every year is 4.5 million taels, and the military expenses of the imperial court alone cannot support so many people. These are not counting the daily wear and tear of the Mawei Army, which is a huge expense, especially those military industrial workshops. Fortunately, many industries under the palace can also have a monthly income of about 200,000 taels, and then Fujian Ocean Trading Company can earn more than 2 million taels per month, who made Geng Jingzhong the largest shareholder of Ocean Trading Company! Of course, this is the reason for the significant increase in trade with the Japanese side in the past year, which used to be about one million taels.

In this way, that is to say, after removing all the expenses, the Jingnan Royal Mansion can now have a balance of more than one million taels per month, plus the income earned in the past few years, the total assets of the Jingnan Royal Mansion are not less than 30 million taels, which is more than the national treasury! It sounds like a lot of money, but if it is converted into soft sister coins in later generations, according to the current purchasing power, one tael of silver is about 300 yuan. Then 30 million taels is 9 billion. It seems that there are many such rich people in China in later generations. But even if there are many, they are counted as rich! Of course, it is far from being able to compare with future generations, but it is enough to show that Geng Jingzhong is rich.

With so many people using vouchers at the same time, Geng Jingzhong was able to gradually recover some of the silver dollars or ingots in case of emergency. The 10th day of the first month of each month is the day when the Mawei Army and various workshops pay their salaries, and the Jingnan Royal Mansion officially launched a voucher system, and all employees can choose silver dollars as wages or vouchers. However, employees who choose a voucher can enjoy a 20% discount when using the voucher. In other words, for the same month's salary, people who choose vouchers will suddenly pay 25% more than others. Although the workers could not calculate the exact percentage, they knew that they could take advantage of it. Therefore, this first issuance was quite smooth, and about two out of ten employees chose the voucher. As long as the vouchers are circulated smoothly, there will be more and more people who choose this way later.

Geng Jingzhong and others have already calculated that in the coming days, the use of silver will still be the mainstream, after all, all the people in the country are now using silver. Geng Jingzhong's own invention of the silver dollar is still a large number of zuò made, but in the future. The silver thing will be slowly eliminated, Geng Jingzhong is not interested in the silver standard, but the gold standard in later generations, which is the trend of historical development. What we are doing now is just paving the way for the implementation of the gold standard system in the future.

As for the silver coins that were minted in a big way a few years ago, the credibility of the royal silver coins has been established in recent years. People used silver coins to trade in the daily market, and from the beginning there was no forced use by the common people or merchants. In the beginning, there were careful merchants who refused to accept silver coins, but as silver coins spread throughout Fujian, they eventually opened their doors to accept silver coins. At the same time, people also found many advantages of silver coins in the process of use, such as light weight, easy to carry, easy to calculate, etc., these conveniences are very popular, so people are more and more willing to accept the use of silver coins.

At that time, when the silver coins were minted, Geng Jingzhong once thought that there would be people copying silver coins, but Geng Jingzhong did not prevent others from minting silver coins, but he strengthened the management of silver coins, and those silver coins that were too inferior were not allowed to enter the market, let alone others were not allowed to imitate their own silver coin style for minting. The silver coins minted by the palace are not learned by others in terms of technology, and the silver coins minted are far stronger than the silver coins minted by others in any aspect, which is very easy to distinguish, so the other silver coins have been slowly eliminated over the years, and the silver coins that can continue to be retained in Fujian are only a few of them with excellent condition. In the process of minting silver coins, although several other minting silver coins made a small profit, they were able to make a lot of money after the number increased, so they were able to survive until now.

Now in Fujian, especially in the inland prefectures and counties, there are basically no silver ingots in the past, and people use silver coins one by one, and ninety percent of the silver coins are minted by the palace. And on the coast, that is, in the two ports, because of the large number of foreign merchants, they also brought a lot of other coins. For example, the merchants of the country brought silver ingots from other places, while the merchants of the West used silver dollars from various countries.

Geng Jingzhong also took this matter into consideration, so he also strictly ordered banks around the country to strictly control the exchange of huàn silver coins, and they must not be sloppy. China's monetary system has always been chaotic, and although the silver standard is implemented, there is never a unified standard. The amount of silver circulating in the market has also been uneven. Silver, fine silver, distiller's lees silver, silver of fine quality, broken silver, and even silver can all be involved in the field of circulation. The actual value of all kinds of silver is also different, so it is important to distinguish the nature of all kinds of silver, and not all of them can be exchanged for huàn silver coins according to their actual weight.

At the same time, banks should also prevent some bank staff members from taking advantage of the opportunity to engage in irregularities and engaging in irregularities by opportunistically exchanging inferior silver for high-quality silver, or exaggerating the amount of money in short catties and two pounds, so as to achieve the goal of enriching their own pockets. After all, no one dares to hope for the professional morality of bank employees in the face of interests, and this is the most likely problem to breed in the transition stage between the old and new currencies. In fact, this matter is that the banks in the two ports need to be seriously investigated, and there are not so many foreign merchants in other places.

When Geng Jingzhong woke up in Miao Quanchen Street, he immediately took precautions in this regard. At the same time, he ordered that all branches must make detailed records of the exchange of money, and every transaction must be implemented to the handling personnel, and how many silver coins must be exchanged for silver, how many copper coins, and how much silver of various natures must be checked, and the head office will send people to various places to review and audit at any time, so as to prevent problems in the exchange of new and old currencies as much as possible.

Whereas, in medium and large transactions, silver coins have a great advantage over carrying calculations. The actual situation is that in the retail industry, silver coins are much more convenient than copper coins and silver, for example, commodities that used to cost one or two silver coins can now be done with one or two silver coins, and there is no need to observe the fineness and variety of silver, which is very convenient for buyers and sellers. The royal silver coins had all these points, so Miao Quanchen launched a business at the bank branch at the port, that is, after foreign merchants brought a large amount of silver, they could immediately go to the bank to exchange it for silver coins.

Compared with the merchants of the country, there is also a relatively large group of silver coins in the port, that is, merchants from various European countries. Because at this time, all European countries were forming their own monetary systems, and each country also issued its own national currency. Moreover, in the long-term commercial trade between European countries, a set of currency exchange system has also been formed. Therefore, for European merchants, they are more accustomed to using currency with a large amount of value, and for China, a currency with the weight of silver as the monetary value, it is very difficult to use, and every time they go to China to do business, they can only convert the silver dollar in their hands into purchasing power by weight. Or simply buy enough silver bullion and then come to China to do business, and when you leave China, you have to convert the leftover silver in your hand back into silver coins that are common in Europe, otherwise you can't use the silver nugget back to Europe or India, and the use of silver bullion involves the fineness, quality, purity and other problems of silver is very troublesome.

Although this method of trading was very inconvenient, in this era, Chinese goods had an absolute dominant position and were extremely profitable, so most European merchants could only endure this inconvenience and rushed to China to do business. Although there is no clear exchange rate between the royal silver coin and the currencies of European countries, it is not a problem for merchants to roughly convert the exchange rate between the two currencies of a commodity with the largest amount of transactions. Originally, Western merchants could not find an exact place to exchange silver coins, but now it is good, as soon as the bank opens, it will be right to arrive! (To be continued......)