Since ancient times, China has not been the main producer of gold and silver, so the total amount of gold and silver is very small. We now watch some TV dramas, especially those of the Song, Ming and Qing dynasties, and often see someone holding some gold and silver to buy things to check out, which was unimaginable at that time. Now, our total amount of gold and silver is actually much larger than in ancient times, but because gold and silver no longer have the function of money and are no longer circulating in the market, it gives people the illusion that gold and silver have become less.
A Brief History of Ancient Chinese Gold and Silver
The economic evolution of human society has gone through several stages, such as barter exchange, equivalent barter exchange, and currency exchange. For a long time, metal currencies occupied a very important position. The reserves of gold and silver mines in Europe and Arabia are relatively large, so gold coins and silver coins are used more; while in ancient China, there were more copper mines, so a large number of copper coins were used. Moreover, due to the problem that the minting and circulation of metal currency will be too heavy and inconvenient to use, the direct transaction method of physical objects is still retained. In ancient times, many taxes, rewards, officials and other wealth circulation were achieved through cloth, grain and other items. So for a long time, gold and silver were not used as currency.
During the Qin and Han dynasties, gold and silver were status luxury goods and sacrificial supplies. At that time, the imperial court explicitly prohibited the use of gold and silver as currency. However, the records of the history books have caused us a certain ambiguity. At that time, gold and silver were called "gold" and "platinum", and the records of "how much gold" that often appeared were actually referring to brass, not real gold. For example, In order to atone for her son's sins, Princess Longxuan, the sister of Emperor Wu of Han, paid a one-time "Golden Thousand Jin"; In the Book of Pinghuai, there is also a time when "a horse is a hundred gold." "; Historia. In the Yan Zhao Gong Shi Family, there is also a "Zi Zhi Cause Left Behind Su Dai Bai Jin". The "gold" here refers to brass.
With the development of the financial economy, there is a slow demand for large-value currencies. During the Wei and Jin Dynasties, gold and silver were already widely used as weighing currency. But at this time it is only "weighing money", which is now called "monetary reserve", which is only a measure of value, not for market transactions. The main currency in circulation at this time was still copper coins.
By the Tang Dynasty, since the Silk Road had been opened, a large number of foreign merchants, especially Persian merchants, entered the Chinese mainland for trade in large numbers. With their arrival, a large number of foreign gold and silver currencies also entered the currency market. For example, the Sassanid gold coins mentioned many times in the drama "The Twelve Hours of Chang'an" are the currency used by the Persians. However, the process of converting copper coins and gold and silver coins was very complicated, and later, some merchants gradually began to use gold and silver transactions. However, this is limited to large foreign trade transactions, and the main currency of the country is copper coins.
In the four dynasties of the Song, Yuan, Ming, and Qing dynasties, the economy has developed to the extent that copper money is difficult to load, and a new financial system and monetary embodiment are urgently needed. So there were paper money and gold and silver currencies of the Song Dynasty and the Ming Dynasty. Because of its high value, gold and silver have gradually become the daily trading currency of some people. However, limited by the purity, quality and other indicators, the use of gold and silver is very troublesome. For example, in TV dramas, there is often a person who eats wine and dinner, casually takes a piece of silver and puts it on the table as wine money, and then raises his legs and leaves. This situation is simply unimaginable. The value of a piece of silver is not to say, let's talk about the weight, how can the guest side guarantee it? Therefore, in general stores, there will be small gold and silver scales. Before the officer left, he first said that the silver was not enough to pay the bill.
Purity is a problem that metal money, especially precious metal money, can never get around. In terms of Qing Dynasty official silver, generally one piece of official silver is 50 taels. However, the purity of the silver collected by each region varies, so there will be some deviations in use. For example, in shaanxi province, official silver, 50 two will be mixed with some gold, their value is obviously higher than ordinary silver.
More important than purity and weight is the question of the authenticity of gold and silver. All currencies of great value face this problem, but only a question of seriousness or not. Similarly, every dynasty had the problem of fake gold and fake silver. In order to deal with this phenomenon of counterfeit money, merchants can only polish their eyes and summarize various identification methods. For example, silver, mainly look at the color of the stomata formed when casting, the stomata are real, and the gray is false. Identifying gold is a three-plate axe: weight, tooth bite, and fire.
It can be seen that it is really not easy to use gold and silver. The current costume drama is obviously an exaggeration.
By the time of the Ming Dynasty, due to the large inflow of foreign silver dollars, the purity and value of silver began to decline, and the purchasing power of one or two silver had dropped to about half of the original. At this time, silver can be regarded as a serious currency. But in less than three hundred years, mature paper money appeared, and gold and silver once again returned to their position as financial standard currencies, gradually withdrawing from the circulation market.
The above is just a summary of the history of gold and silver as a currency in China. To really make things clear, you have to come up with data.
Taking gold as an example, the first gold peak in Chinese history was in the Western Han Dynasty, and the total reserves were about 200 tons. Later, with the prevalence of thick burials at that time, a large amount of gold was buried in the ground;
The annual production of gold in the Northern Song Dynasty is about 335 kilograms, ignoring the loss, multiplying the existence time of the Northern Song Dynasty by 167 years, and the total new stock should be about 55 tons;
This figure of the Southern Song Dynasty is not easy to find data, but it is certainly less, because the main gold-producing area of the Shandong Peninsula is no longer in the hands of the Southern Song Dynasty;
The annual output of the Yuan Dynasty was about 1 ton, multiplied by the existence time of 98 years, and the new stock was 98 tons;
The annual output of the Ming Dynasty was about 1.25 tons, multiplied by the existence time of 276 years, and the new stock was 345 tons;
The annual output of gold in the early Qing Dynasty was only 60-70 kilograms, and it is conceivable how pitiful the new stock was. But in the late Qing Dynasty, gold production suddenly soared to 13.5 tons, but unfortunately the time was too short, and the Qing Dynasty perished within a few years. Therefore, the new stock of gold in the Qing Dynasty is 100 tons.
If we assume that the total gold stock of the Tang Dynasty was 300 tons, then the total gold stock in ancient China was about 1100 tons.
So, what is the gold stock of our new China? From 1949 to 2014, the total gold production of Chinese mainland was 6100 tons. Now it is estimated that The gold stock of China's private sector is 6000 to 7000 tons, and the central bank's gold reserves are 1900.4 tons, which is close to 100 million tons! The amount of gold in China today is more than the total production of the ancient two thousand years combined.
Therefore, gold is not scarce now, but it is not used in daily circulation.