Yokohama Shokin Bank Udanjo Branch
North Korea Bank Yingkou Branch
Early construction of yingkou branch of Hua-Russian Daosheng Bank
On the left side of the photo is the late building of the Hua-Russian Daosheng Bank, and on the right is the Zhengjin Bank
Source: Yingkou Daily Author: Yan Hai
In the west of Yingkou Liaohe Square Road, there is a small red brick building with a Japanese Tatsuno-style Mengsha roof, which is now the Liaohe Branch of the Yingkou Bank of Communications, and the cultural relics protection sign in front of the door reads "The former site of the Yingkou Branch of Zhenglong Bank", which is the only modern foreign bank building preserved in our city at present, which is extremely precious. Around the Zhenglong Bank, there have been three more powerful foreign banks in history, namely: Japan's Zhengjin Bank, the Bank of Korea, and the Russian Hua-Russia Daosheng Bank, all of which are financial instruments used by the Japanese-Russian invaders to seize the interests of northeast China, and the banknotes they issue compete with the local yingkou silver to form a three-legged trend.
In the first 40 years after the opening of Yingkou (1861-1901), relying on the unique furnace silver and furnace silver system, the standard currency was unified, and the credit turnover was facilitated, so that Yingkou occupied the position of the financial center of northeast China for a long time. After 1900, Tsarist Russia and Japan successively occupied Yingkou by force, the social situation was turbulent, and several well-known silver furnaces in Yingkou went bankrupt and collapsed, triggering a financial storm in Yingkou. On the other hand, in order to implement its colonial policy, the Japanese government systematically set up financial institutions in northeast China, and the Zhengjin Bank in Yingkou was the earliest financial institution established in northeast China.
Founded in 1880 and headquartered in Yokohama, Japan, the full name of Shokin Bank is yokohama Bank, Japan, whose purpose is to develop Japan's overseas trade, with international exchange as its main business, and the shares are limited to Japanese nationals. There are branches in China's major commercial ports, and all Chinese loans and indemnities to Japan are operated by the bank. In January 1900, the Niuzhuang Branch of the Yokohama Shokin Bank was established in Yingkou, located in the southern vicinity of Sanhai Shin-kan (now the location of the Haitong Securities Sales Office), to handle trade exchange between Japan and Northeast China. In 1902, yokohama Shokin Bank notes were issued "pay at first sight", which circulated throughout northeast China. After the outbreak of the Russo-Japanese War in 1904, in order to manage the military expenses of the Japanese army, branches were set up in Dalian and Shenyang to issue Japanese military hand tickets. Especially after the occupation of Yingkou, the army was forced to use the hand ticket to circulate at the same price as Chinese silver dollars and furnace silver, resulting in the outflow of silver from Yingkou. In September 1906, the Japanese government authorized the bank to issue silver yuan bills as the legal tender of the Japanese diaspora in northeast China, which were forcibly circulated in Japan's sphere of influence, so the Shokin Bank once had the status of The "central bank" of Japan in northeast China and acted as the agent of the Japanese treasury.
In June 1910, with the rise of the status of Dalian Port and the decline of Yingkou Port, the Dalian Branch of Zhengjin Bank replaced Yingkou Branch to become the headquarters of Zhengjin Bank in Northeast China. In 1913, due to the collapse of the market silver price, the silver yuan of zhengjin bank also depreciated, and zhengjin bank issued gold yuan bonds. In northeast China, the banknotes issued by Zhengjin Bank take advantage of the opportunity of the north flow of funds during the peak period of agricultural product trading in the autumn and winter in the northeast and the south silk tea export season in the summer to issue and recover the banknotes, and make huge profits through the price difference. In 1917, the Japanese cabinet of Tera-yi rectified the financial system of japanese overseas Chinese in northeast China, abolishing the right to issue gold bills and the right to act as the national treasury of the Shokin Bank, and instead granted it to the Japanese-controlled North Korean Bank. Zhengjin Bank has since lost its status as the central bank of Northeast China and returned to its original international exchange business. In 1934, it was renamed the Yingkou Branch of the Yokohama Shokin Bank, but collapsed after the surrender of Japan in 1945.
The Bank of Korea was originally the central bank of the Joseon Dynasty, founded in 1909 and headquartered in Seoul, North Korea, and was formed by a special decree of the Japanese government. The following year, Japan officially swallowed Up Korea, and the Bank of Korea became a financial institution controlled by Japan. The Bank of Korea first entered northeast China in 1913, first in Dalian, Shenyang, Changchun, three important stations of the Mantetsu city, and in September 1916, the Yingkou branch of the Bank of Korea was established in Yingkou (after 1926, it moved to the former Niuzhuang Post Office, which is now the memorial hall of the origin of the Red Cross Movement). The Dprk Bank initially bought export bills of exchange in order to offset the DEBTS of the DPRK with the claims of the Northeast Excess. The golden bills issued by the Bank of North Korea (also known as bank bills, commonly known as "old man bills") were only circulated in North Korea and northeast China, when the northeast currency system was complex, and Most Chinese merchants used gold bills to borrow North Korean banks for exchange, and almost all Japanese in the northeast used North Korean bank gold bills as a turnover. Since the Bank of Korea is an issuing bank and has accumulated rich experience in the process of unifying the Korean currency system, the Japanese Tera-Yi Cabinet proposed the policy of economic unification of Korea and Northeast China in 1917, authorizing the Bank of Korea to concurrently lead the issuance of northeast China, and transferring all the issuance of gold yuan bills and acting treasury rights of the former Jeongjin Bank to the Bank of Korea, thus enabling the DPRK Bank to quickly replace the Shokin Bank as Japan's central bank in northeast China.
At a time when Japan was ambitiously trying to control the financial market in northeast China, Tsarist Russia had already taken the lead and set up the Yingkou Branch of the Hua-Russian Daosheng Bank in Yingkou in 1897, which was originally located in Shuangqiaoli, a two-story building for brick and wood corridors, and moved to Sanyi Temple Street in 1907 as a two-story cement building (located in the east of zhengjin Bank, west of the present-day Liaohe Square). The Hua-Russian Daosheng Bank is the product of the Tsarist government's fight for China's economic rights and interests, and is headquartered in St. Petersburg. After the Sino-Japanese Sino-Japanese War, Tsarist Russia claimed the merits of "three-state intervention to return the Liao", and signed a Sino-Russian secret treaty with the Qing government in 1896, obtaining the right to build a Railway in the Middle East. The first clause of the Middle East Railway Contract stipulates that all construction and management matters shall be undertaken by Huaru Daosheng Bank. Therefore, since its birth, the main task of the Hua-Russian Daosheng Bank has been to financially support the right of Tsarist Russia to seize the middle East railway. At that time, the northern part of northeast China was both cash-free and paperless, coupled with the chaos of the currency system, the Chinese-Russian Daosheng Bank took the opportunity to issue a large number of Russian rubles (commonly known as Qiang Ti), which was vigorously promoted along the Middle East Railway and was used by local merchants.
In 1900, Tsarist Russia sent troops to suppress the Boxers on the pretext of protecting the overseas Chinese, armed occupation of Yingkou, and in the following four years, the Hua-Russian Daosheng Bank became the treasury of the Russian army, seizing 4.84 million taels of customs duty from Yingkou. Due to the difference in the monetary, gold and silver standards between Northeast China and Europe at that time, mutual trade required complex exchange and cumbersome procedures, and the ruble circulation of the Hua-Russian Daosheng Bank became the hub and medium for trade settlement between Northeast China and Europe. However, after the Russo-Japanese War, Tsarist Russia was defeated, the sphere of influence withdrew from the southeast of the northeast, and the business of the Yingkou Branch of the Hua-Russian Daosheng Bank was also greatly reduced. In 1907, Dongshenghe, a giant merchant in Yingkou who had borrowed 800,000 rubles from the bank, went bankrupt and collapsed, and the Yingkou branch of huaru Daosheng Bank was further weakened by it. After the October Revolution in Russia in 1917, the ruble depreciated widely, and the merchants in Yingkou and Harbin suffered heavy losses, and the Hua-Russian Daosheng Bank was forced to close its business in 1926 and withdrew from the historical stage. In 1929, the Niuzhuang Post Office moved into the former Yingkou Branch Building of the Chinese-Russian Daosheng Bank, which was destroyed during the Liberation War.
In the early ten years of the last century, Yingkou's financial circles were basically the era of japan, Tsarist banks and China's national finance forces competing for hegemony, according to the book "Introduction to finance in the Three Eastern Provinces" published in 1931, the ruble of the Hua-Russian Daosheng Bank, the silver banknote of the Japanese Zhengjin Bank, and the silver of Yingkou were all sharp tools for the turnover of funds in the northeast. Daosheng and Zhengjin, with their surplus gold in Europe and Japan, turned into Shanghai silver in order to sell Nanhui in the northeast and compete with the furnace silver. "More than a hundred years later, these financial institutions that stood majestically on the banks of the Liao River have long been obliterated by the dust of history, leaving only two old building sites as historical witnesses, telling the strange financial past."
(The author is a researcher at yingkou city museum and consultant of the city historical society)