The story of money

Money refers to any commodity that can perform the functions of exchange medium, value scale, deferred payment standard and completely movable wealth storage means, and can be regarded as money; The commodity separated from the commodity and fixed as a universal equivalent is money; Money is the product of the development of commodity exchange to a certain stage. The essence of money is universal equivalent.

China's ancient monetary system was based on copper coins. The early forms of money have not yet been discovered. The original copper coins had various shapes, including knife coins, cloth coins and ant nose coins. After Qin Shihuang unified China, he ordered the national copper coins to be based on Qin copper coins. Because the sand mold is used to pour copper coins, the cast copper coins have burrs, so there is a square hole in the middle, which is used to connect wooden sticks in series to polish and file. This special shape gives it many symbolic and mysterious explanations. Some people think that the circle of copper coins represents "heaven" and the square hole in the center represents "earth". Copper coins are usually printed with the emperor's year number when casting.

Gold coins were rare in ancient China. During the Spring and Autumn Period and the Warring States Period, the State of Chu in the Yangtze River valley in the south of China once used gold cakes and nuggets. But in other regions and dynasties, gold was mainly used for decoration and preservation. In the second century BC, Emperor Wu of the Western Han Dynasty issued white deerskin coins to reward nobles and military generals. In addition to copper coins, cotton cloth, silk, rice and other daily necessities are also used as the unit of calculation of money (rather than actual money) to pay the salaries of bureaucrats and the army. After the Tang Dynasty, silver currency gradually spread widely. Although the silver in the national treasury and the official treasury is cast into ingots according to the uniform color and weight for storage, the silver in circulation is not coins, but one by one. When it is used in the market, it has to go through complicated procedures such as calculating color and weighing. Large pieces of silver ingots should be cut with clips, and small pieces of silver ingots need to be recast into large pieces at the silversmith's place. There are many reasons why China doesn't use silver coins, but the main reason is that the government can't provide guarantee for the silver coins issued due to political instability, and at the same time, due to frequent wars, people often hoard silver, which leads to insufficient market circulation to support the silver-based monetary system.

Because it is extremely inconvenient to carry a large number of copper coins, cross banknotes appeared in the highly developed Northern Song Dynasty. This is also one of the earliest paper money in the world. But it's more like a money order than paper money in the modern sense. The Yuan Dynasty established by Mongols followed paper money and regarded it as one of the wonderful ways to solve economic difficulties. Regardless of the actual currency circulation and economic level, they issued a large number of unsecured paper money, which caused the earliest inflation. The Yuan Dynasty was replaced by the Ming Dynasty established by the Han people. Its founding emperor Zhu Yuanzhang was a conservative agronomist. He thinks that paper money is foreign and should be discarded. However, the paper money issued by the Ming Dynasty itself is called "Daming Treasure Note". This kind of paper money is rarely used among the people.

In the middle and late Ming Dynasty, silver began to flow into China in large quantities, becoming a metal currency as common as copper coins. During the Qing Dynasty, silver had become the main monetary unit ("two") of the country. At the end of the Qing Dynasty, Mexican silver dollars began to circulate in large quantities in China. During the reign of Emperor Guangxu, China minted his own silver coins and set up a family bank to issue regular paper money. 1935, China implemented the legal currency system and officially abolished the silver standard system. According to the Sino-US Silver Agreement of 1936, one yuan of legal tender is equal to 0.265 US dollars.

The currency of China is RMB, which is issued by the State Bank, the People's Bank of China. The unit of RMB is yuan, and the tokens are cents and cents. A dollar is ten cents and a dime is ten cents. Paper money has yuan, jiao and fen, and coins have yuan, jiao and fen. The face value of yuan is 1, 2,5, 10 yuan, 20 yuan, 50 yuan, 100 yuan, the face value of corner is 1, 2,5, and the face value of cent is 1, 2,5. The abbreviation of RMB yuan is RMB yuan.