introduction
After Argentina has a new president, the inflation problem has not been solved.
Recently, due to inflation, the Argentine peso has depreciated seriously, and people can't exchange a box of money for a piece of bread.
As a result, the country's central bank decided to launch banknotes with denominations of 10,000 or even 20,000 yuan starting from May 7, declaring that this would be good for the trading market.
It is reported that the first batch of 770 million new pesos with a face value of 10,000 has now been shipped from China to Argentina.
But why was Argentina's currency shipped from China? For no other reason, the peso has depreciated too quickly, and the country's ability to print money is limited.
If they wait for the first batch of 10,000 pesos to be printed, it is estimated that the market will have to ask the government to issue 100,000 bills.
Therefore, the Argentine government can only let China handle it first, that is to say, the Argentine banknotes were actually printed with the help of China.
So, is it hard to print money? In addition to Argentina, what other countries are looking for China to print money on their behalf?
First, the art of printing money, second only to the precision technology of building nuclear bombs
In fact, what many people don't know is that printing money is also a neck-stuck technology. Money printing, while it may seem simple, doesn't sound that complicated.
But in fact, according to the statistics of the World Bank, less than half of the world's central banks have the strength to print money completely independently.
Argentina, on the other hand, is also a country with a certain amount of money printing capacity, but the country's money printing machines are too few and too slow to be busy.
But at the moment, inflation is an imminent problem, so it can only outsource the money printing index to China to solve its own urgent needs.
Like Argentina, fiat money is produced in China, as well as Nepal.
Unfold the country's largest banknote, the 1,000 rupees, and you can see that it is not eye-catching, the security is clear, and the hand feels good.
In addition, in the lower right corner of the front of the banknote, there are three dotted braille to help people with disabilities count the amount and distinguish the authenticity.
Banknotes with the above characteristics can basically be determined to be produced in China. And things like banknotes, which ordinary people use every day, need to be handed over to China to print.
From this alone, it is not difficult to see that it is really not an easy task for small and weak countries to print money on their own.
So, how hard is it to print money? First of all, unlike ordinary printed matter, banknotes have extreme requirements for anti-counterfeiting.
After all, the circulation of banknotes is often related to a country's financial security. Once counterfeit money becomes popular, people will question the credibility of fiat money and turn to other means of circulation.
To put it more seriously, the market order and financial system of the entire country may be at risk of collapse.
In order to achieve the ideal anti-counterfeiting effect, a banknote is extremely particular about the selection of materials from ink to paper, as well as the way of printing.
First of all, in terms of material selection, as legal tender, the material of paper banknotes, of course, is not easy to be imitated, the better.
For the sake of insurance, the papermaking formula of banknotes has been classified as a top secret by the state, and the pulp is uniformly blended by the paper mills directly under the state-owned enterprises.
To this day, people only know that the renminbi is made from a certain proportion of wood and cotton, mixed with some chemicals.
As for the specific ratio, and the types of materials involved, it has always been a mystery. In addition, since paper money is the most commonly used type of currency in circulation.
It has to pass by the hands of several people in a day, and there are all kinds of people, some people don't like to be clean, and some people are rude and violent. Banknotes, on the other hand, are made of paper, and after changing hands several times, they will inevitably be crumpled into a mess.
Therefore, banknotes also have strict requirements for the durability of raw materials. Like the banknote of the renminbi, it has the characteristics of acid resistance and waterproofing at the same time.
Although we don't know what kind of black technology it uses, it is certain that the pulp fiber of RMB is evenly distributed and stable.
In addition, like the anti-counterfeiting watermark of RMB, it is not printed, but used to change the fiber density of the pulp to achieve it.
Where the fiber density is high, the light transmittance is a little worse. And where most of the rest of the fibers are uniform, the light transmittance is good.
As soon as the light shines, a dim figure will appear in the place where the light is poor, and there will be no other miscellaneous shadows, indicating that this is a real banknote.
Secondly, in addition to the use of paper, the ink required to print banknotes is also very particular.
Spread out a brand new 100 yuan bill, we can see that on the right side of its front, there is a security line with a hollow window.
This tape-like thing will take on different colors depending on the angle of viewing.
Turn on the detector lamp, and a few small 100 numbers are engraved on a security line a few millimeters wide.
In fact, this small 100, like the bronzing 100 used to indicate the size of the denomination in the center of the banknote, is printed with the same ink, that is, the core material in the banknote making process - optical gradient magnetic ink.
This kind of ink can make the printing font appear flowing, displaced, and even gradient visual effects through the magneto-optical effect. Because in China, photovariable ink often appears on 100 yuan bills, so it is also called "local tyrant gold".
Optical gradient magnetic ink not only has obvious characteristics and high recognition, but also has a first-class anti-counterfeiting effect. So far, there have been no successful cases of forgery.
The cost of the high difficulty of imitation is that it is also very expensive.
Many small countries, because they are stuck in this technology, have not been able to create anti-counterfeiting marks that belong to their own banknotes, so that the printed banknotes are easy to be cracked by criminal gangs.
So why won't China get stuck? For no other reason, the China Banknote Printing and Minting Corporation applied for a patent for the technology as early as 2013.
And if other countries want to burn this kind of "local tyrant gold" on their banknotes, they have to ask the help of China's banknote printing factory.
However, China's money printing technology has also experienced a period of being controlled by others, more than 100 years ago in the late Qing Dynasty and the Republic of China, China's banknote printing anti-counterfeiting technology was stuck by other countries.
Even in the early days of the founding of the People's Republic of China, China's banknotes were still difficult to be self-sufficient.
2. China - the origin of paper money, but it was stuck in the neck
Although it is said that the world's first paper money, Jiaozi, was produced in the Song Dynasty of China, the circulation market has almost always been dominated by metal money throughout ancient times.
The reason for this situation is that the technical level of the ancients was limited, so the anti-counterfeiting function of paper money was really difficult to achieve, so that the banknotes issued by the imperial court or money bank could not escape the fate of being washed away by counterfeit money.
It was not until the Westernization Movement of the late Qing Dynasty that China had paper money in the modern sense.
However, the equipment and technical personnel required for printing money were all imported from the United States, and they only had the ability to print small and large amounts of banknotes, and until the fall of the Qing Dynasty, they were not popularized among the people.
During the Republican period, China began to outsource some of its banknotes to the British.
Among them, the British De La Rue Company, which monopolized the international banknote printing market, not only printed legal tender for the government of the Republic of China, but also printed Hong Kong dollars for HSBC before Hong Kong's return to the motherland.
After the founding of the People's Republic of China, it was subjected to a technological blockade by Britain and the United States, and could only seek advice from the Soviet Union.
At first, the Soviet Union provided advanced gravure and watermarking technology, and printed a second set of renminbi for China.
But the good times did not last long, with the mid-50s of the last century, China and the Soviet Union became hostile, a large number of experts withdrew, and China's banknote printing industry was forced to embark on the road of independent research and development.
Since then, China's banknote printing and anti-counterfeiting technology has undergone many innovations, especially the Chinese People's Printing House in the third set of yuan.
It established the technology of color printing and multi-color jointing, made a qualitative leap in pattern, anti-counterfeiting, etc., and developed the first domestic banknote printing machine, bidding farewell to the dependence on the United States and the Soviet Union banknote printing equipment.
However, since the reform and opening up, the previous generation of banknote printing technology has become more and more unsuitable for the development of the times.
With the active economy, people's demand for currency is increasing day by day, and at the same time, the impact of money values has made the morality of the people in the society decay, and counterfeiting has become a trend, so that the counterfeiting situation is becoming increasingly severe.
For example, in the Guangdong counterfeit money case in the 90s of the last century, the counterfeiting dens of the criminal gang even took less than four years to print counterfeit money with a total value of more than 600 million yuan.
In addition, almost all dens use a complete set of laser phototypesetting and electronic color separation plate making technology, and the counterfeit money with better quality control cannot even be identified by bank professionals.
In 1999, not long after the issuance of the fifth set of renminbi, counterfeiting gangs immediately followed up and launched counterfeit banknotes of the same style, which frightened the general public from accepting new coins and seriously disrupted the market order.
It was not until the public security cracked down and the criminals were brought to justice one after another that the situation of counterfeiting throughout the country eased somewhat.
However, in order to eradicate counterfeiting, it is obviously not enough to rely on legal deterrence, and it is also necessary to come up with technological innovation in the anti-counterfeiting technology of printing money.
Therefore, in the fifth set of renminbi issued in 2005, the mainland used the design of window-opening security threads and microtext.
In the follow-up version in 2015, colorless fluorescent fiber anti-counterfeiting technology was added, which increased the difficulty of counterfeiting.
It was not until the 2019 version of the RMB that the investment in optical variable magnetic ink and the popularization of scanning code payment basically dispelled the idea of criminals to counterfeit.
Nowadays, China's banknote printing anti-counterfeiting technology is at the forefront of the world, although for the need for anti-counterfeiting, the relevant technology is not convenient to teach to other countries, but China's minting enterprises have never engaged in technology monopoly to make huge profits.
Kadeer, executive director of Nepal's central bank, once lamented that the 1,000 rupees printed in China not only have good quality control, but also have a very high cost performance, which has saved a lot of expenses for the government.
epilogue
It can be seen that the reason why China's banknote printing industry has been able to reach the leading position in the world is inseparable from its strict quality control and confidentiality measures.
And every process in the process of printing banknotes has been strictly checked to ensure that the quality of the currency meets the national standards.
In addition, China's banknote printing industry chain is complete and the price is affordable, which is well received by the majority of developing countries.