Chapter 42 Section 2 Currency Invasion of China by Imperialist Countries

Currencies of imperialist countries ran rampant in China, which was the root cause of China's currency chaos during this period.In the mid-Qing Dynasty, Western powers imported opium to China and defrauded China of a large amount of silver and supplies.Because silver dollars are more convenient to use than silver taels, foreign merchants exchange one silver dollar (including more than six silver coins) for one or two silver coins for unequal exchange.The early Spanish silver dollar "Benyang" was the first foreign currency to flow in. It was first used in Fujian and Guangdong in the 15th century, and then expanded to the whole country. It was called lace silver and pan silver.There are many types of foreign silver dollars, such as Dutch Malaysian money, Mexican double-column lace money, Portuguese cross money, Venetian silver dollar, etc., as well as Japanese Longyang, French Annan silver dollar, American trade silver dollar, Philippine Pisa, Singaporean silver dollar and various silver dollars. Copper nickel coins.The silver coins cast in Mexico in the later period are also called Yingyang, Zhengying, and Yingyang, which replaced Benyang and were the most widely circulated. It was estimated that there were four to five million yuan in China during the Revolution of 1911.The second is the British silver dollar, also known as Zhanyang, Fanyang, Renyang, which was first used in Guangdong and Guangxi.Later, British trade silver dollars were cast, and there were more than 1.5 million yuan in China.At the end of the Qing Dynasty, the self-made silver dollar was paralleled with the silver tael.

The imperialist countries also issued banknotes in China.Most of these foreign banknotes, except for a few, have no guarantee of issuance.During World War I and the economic crisis in the early 1930s, the Western economy was in a downturn, and even foreign banks in China closed down one after another. The banknotes they issued in China became waste paper.More than ten years after the Opium War, Hong Kong Liru Bank first set up branches in Guangzhou and Shanghai to issue banknotes.Then, British banks such as Macquarie and HSBC also successively set up branches in Shanghai and other commercial ports to issue banknotes.HSBC also monopolized Shanghai's financial market and foreign exchange market, controlled Shanghai's import and export trade and commodity markets, and even influenced China's political situation at that time.Banks such as Citibank and Federal Reserve Bank of the United States, Agricole Bank of France, the National Bank of Tsarist Russia and the Sino-Russian Daosheng Bank, and Yokohama Shokin of Japan all issued banknotes circulating in China, forming a sphere of influence.Britain and the United States controlled the middle and lower reaches of the Yangtze River with Shanghai as the center, Tsarist Russia occupied Northeast China, Mongolia and Xinjiang, France controlled Yungui, Germany controlled Jiaodong, and Japan controlled Fujian and Liaodong.After that, the American power expanded day by day. After the Second World War, the US dollar dominated the situation, manipulating the political situation and financial activities behind the scenes.

In the 1930s and during the Anti-Japanese War, Japanese imperialism not only issued banknotes indiscriminately in the Japanese banks in the areas it occupied, but also made the puppet Manchukuo, Puppet Mongolia, Puppet North China, Puppet Jidong, and Wang Puppet traitors supported by it The gang issued a variety of counterfeit banknotes and military tickets, including the Chinese people.According to preliminary estimates, from November 1938 to the end of 1941, Japan issued military bills in China equivalent to 3 billion taels of Chinese silver, and Korean silver dollar banknotes were equivalent to more than 2.4 billion taels of silver.In the later period of the Anti-Japanese War, the counterfeit Japanese banknotes were distributed even more frantically, and cruelly plundered the Chinese people.