Chapter 67 The total number of treasures
Tie Xuan nodded and said: "The treasure banknote system was established in the seventh year of Hongwu, but in fact, this policy was already implemented at the beginning of the founding of the Ming Dynasty. As for the number of treasure banknotes before the seventh year of Hongwu, it is impossible to test. At the beginning of the founding of the People's Republic of China, everything was complicated. , many things are unorganized. However, one thing is certain. That is that after seven years of Hongwu, all the old banknotes were replaced by new banknotes. How many new banknotes are there? I estimate it is more than 10 million ingots . In addition, there is one more thing that needs to be considered, and that is the Hu Weiyong case."
"Perhaps everyone has overlooked one thing. The Hu Weiyong case involved treasure banknotes. The biggest crime was that he printed more than one million ingots of treasure banknotes on his own."
"Although Tie Mou believes that the imperial court is honest and honest, we must also pay attention to this part. It is not just the number that should be paid attention to. There is also the fact that before and after the Hu Weiyong case, the number of Ming Dynasty treasures was almost empty. In many places, the accounts cannot be reconciled. .I don’t know if I don’t dare to settle the account.”
"However, one thing can be calculated, and that is the production capacity of Baochao. Since the seventh year of Hongwu, Baochao has been made under the supervision of the Baochao Lifting Department. The annual output is fixed, with a maximum of more than seven million produced in a year. Ingots. From the seventh year of Hongwu to the eighteenth year of Hongwu, the annual production quantity was between five million and seven million ingots. Taking the middle number, it was probably around 66 million ingots."
"However, the expenditure of treasure money is not so even."
"In order to recover treasure banknotes, the imperial business tax can collect treasure banknotes every year, but it also requires seven coins and three coins. In the fourteenth year of Hongwu, only about 220,000 banknotes were recovered. After that, the number increased every year, but the year with the most , but to around four million guan.”
"And the imperial court has fixed expenses for issuing banknotes every year, about more than 1.6 million ingots. This is not much, it is just the salary of soldiers and the salary of court officials. I think everyone has received it."
At this point, there was a feeling of bitterness below.
The salaries were all low in the Ming Dynasty, but in fact Zhu Yuanzhang's salary was not low. It can only be said that it is not high. The real low is the depreciation of treasure notes, which have dropped so much from the beginning to now. The salary, which was not high to begin with, was naturally beyond his means.
Seeing this, He Xi understood one thing more and more. This matter of treasure money cannot be solved unless it is resolved. Not just a commercial problem, but also a political problem, and a military problem.
Solving the problem of treasure money is the idea of many people, but it is also a problem that is difficult for everyone to face.
Because this number is too large.
Sixty-six million ingots, this is still an estimate. Not to mention there are many more that are not included in the statistics. It's okay to say 70 million ingots. Seventy million ingots are not equal to seventy million ingots. Ingots refer to silver ingots. The number of taels of silver in an ingot is different. But here we take five taels, one ingot of treasure banknotes is equal to five guan of treasure banknotes.
That is 350 million coins, and the total circulation of copper coins, silver, and gold in the Ming Dynasty is estimated to be less than half of this amount.
But even so, as far as the depreciation of treasure notes is concerned, it is already considered good.
Because currency depreciation has a certain lag. To be honest, before Hongwu's fourteenth year, the depreciation of treasure banknotes was not too severe. On the contrary, fourteen years after Hongwu, even though Zhu Yuanzhang used many methods, the depreciation of treasure banknotes was as unstoppable as a landslide and tsunami.
After all, he had printed so much before, and there was financial inertia. It was difficult for Zhu Yuanzhang to use other income to offset the gap in the treasure banknotes for a while.
It is impossible for the imperial court to use treasure money all of a sudden.
Financial dependence is not so easy to solve.
Zhu Yuanzhang decided to start with the printing of treasure banknotes from the 14th year of Hongwu, and it was not until the 18th year of Hongwu that he reduced the amount of printing of treasure banknotes. As for after the 18th year of Hongwu, although the printing of treasure banknotes continued, there were very few produced each year. . Even craftsmen are being laid off.
Everyone can see Zhu Yuanzhang's intention.
Even the reason why Zhu Yuanzhang was able to do this was due to He Xi. He Xi opened the sea and increased maritime taxes, which filled the hole for the court. This allowed Zhu Yuanzhang to use his leeway to manipulate the treasure banknotes. Otherwise, wouldn't Zhu Yuanzhang know about the problem of the treasure banknotes in history? Why can't it be solved? Is it because you don't want to?
Is it as if the United States doesn’t want to solve its own national debt problem? Don't you want to? It's because they simply don't have the financial room.
"The largest total expenditure on Baobao is actually military expenditure." Tie Xuan said: "In the most year, the military expenditure supported more than 15 million Baobao. In just a few years, Baobao has fallen. I don't know. How much. It’s really time to solve the issue of treasure banknotes. However, if you develop the minimum reserve for banknotes, ten to one, you will need 35 million taels of silver or gold. Subordinate, I really don’t know how to do this?”
There was a slight sweat on He Xi's forehead. This amount was not much more than He Xi had expected. Said: "You forgot to calculate it based on market value, not face value."
Tie Xuan said: "In this way, the money in our hands is probably enough. But it is only enough to exchange banknotes. To answer the original question, the problem of treasure banknotes may be solved, but what about the new Beijing city?"
Yang Shiqi said: "This matter must be dealt with slowly. The first point is that all the treasure banknotes already owned by the imperial court are invalid and will no longer be issued. From now on, the salaries given by the imperial court to the following must be replaced by silver notes , this face value cannot be discounted.”
Tie Xuan said: "1.66 million ingots and 8.3 million taels of silver notes every year. Moreover, no matter what adults do, the issuance of silver notes will definitely exceed hundreds of millions taels. How to keep the value of silver notes from depreciating is also a problem. Big problem. Ming Dynasty can no longer withstand the second treasure banknote problem."
"I'm afraid, if this happens again, the people of Ming Dynasty will never trust any paper money again."
He Xi had to admit that Tie Xuan was right. The legal tender of the Ming Dynasty was treasure banknotes, but the silver coins used below were essentially precious metals and not legal tender of the court at all. But so what? In the Ming and Qing Dynasties, silver was very inconvenient to circulate, and there were not even silver coins.
This is the backlash after repeated banknote policy failures. Paper money has completely lost trust among the people.
It has even reached the point where anyone who makes banknotes is a treacherous minister who brings disaster to the country and the people.
This cannot be wrong at all.
In the last few years of Chongzhen's reign, Chongzhen thought about printing banknotes, but all the officials in the court opposed it, so he had no choice but to leave it alone. However, Chongzhen's original intention was probably just legal robbery.
If paper currency does not solve it, Ming Dynasty will have a natural problem if it wants to develop capitalism, that is, money shortage.
The history of the Song Dynasty can illustrate this.
The Song Dynasty had various problems, but commerce was very developed, but the advanced economic development did not bring benefits, but caused a money shortage. That was because the development of productivity exceeded the development of the total amount of money.
This will cause the originally scarce currency to become more valuable.
In this case, there is no need to develop productivity. As long as you hide your money, it will automatically appreciate in value. Why bother working so hard?
Not to mention capital, even money has become scarce. The developed commodity economy simply cannot continue. This is also the reason why paper money was born in the Song Dynasty. The problem is that there was a practical need to play with paper money in the Song Dynasty, and the people of the Song Dynasty played it well. Especially in the Southern Song Dynasty, there were more than ten rounds of paper money, and they maintained well until the final collapse.
The reason why the paper money collapsed in the Southern Song Dynasty was entirely due to the excessive financial pressure brought by military pressure. It has reached a point where the small court of the Southern Song Dynasty cannot solve the problem. After all, until the end of the war, Guangdong, Guangxi, Huaihe and Huaihe are all battlefields. The ones that can really provide support are the Jiangnan area. It is strange that the Southern Song Dynasty court has not collapsed.
Financial means cannot be created out of thin air.
However, the Jin and Yuan Dynasties did not have such delicate techniques, especially the Yuan Dynasty, which was purely used to collect people's wealth.
The Industrial Revolution did not happen in China. It has its own answers in various fields. Some people think from the probability that the Industrial Revolution itself was just an accident. From a financial perspective, the fact that banknotes cannot be circulated in China is an important reason.
At the end of the Ming Dynasty, Jiangnan was very prosperous, and the most important reason was the continuous inflow of silver. But the question is, the same precious metals continued to flow in, but the Spanish Empire collapsed?
