Before the establishment of the Yuan Dynasty in the Central Plains, Kublai Khan, the ancestor of the Yuan Dynasty, had already followed the experience of the Song and Jin dynasties and began to issue paper money. Because paper money was easy to use and carry in the exchange of goods, it was soon introduced.
In the eighth year of Emperor Taizong's reign (1236), a man named Yu Yuan proposed the introduction of paper money "handing over money". The Yuan court accepted this suggestion, and learned the lesson of the vicious expansion of the gold people's issuance of paper money, and was very cautious about the issuance of paper money, and limited the issuance.
Initially, the Yuan dynasty government distributed local banknotes in a decentralized manner, stipulating that it should be replaced for two or three years, and that it was not allowed to circulate across the border. However, this kind of local paper money that does not circulate across borders greatly hinders commercial exchanges and commodity circulation in various places.
In the first year of the Yuan Dynasty (1260), the Yuan court established a unified paper money system and issued the "Zhongtong Yuanbao Banknote", that is, the "Zhongtong Banknote".
According to the "Yuan Shi • Food And Goods Chronicle", "In the first year of the unification of the ancestors, the banknotes were first made and handed over, based on silk. Fifty taels of silver per penny are one thousand taels, the straightness of all things, and the examples from silk. In October of that year, he also made the Zhongtong Yuanbao banknote. Its text is counted in ten as four: one ten, twenty, thirty, and fifty. Three in a hundred: one hundred, two hundred, five hundred. The second is the consistent text: the consistent text, the second consistent text. Each consistent one or two with the same banknote, two consistent with silver one or two. It is also used as a nakagawa silver goods. There are five of them: one or two, two two, three two, five two, and twelve. Each of the two is the same as one or two of silver, and the silver cover is not in line with the clouds. ”
The original Zhongtong banknotes all adopted the nature of silver-based credit exchange coupons, and also set up a flat bank in various ways, using silver as a guarantee, how many banknotes, how much silver is prepared, and silver banknotes can be exchanged for new ones. And the regulations can be used throughout the country, no need to redeem, there is no limit to the period of use.
It can be seen that the Leveling Bank Library is a financial credit institution that uses silver as a guarantee, exchanges silver banknotes, and exchanges new banknotes for old banknotes.
There are nine kinds of banknotes: ten, twenty, thirty, fifty, one hundred, two hundred, five hundred, five hundred, consistent, and two consecutive texts. Each can be exchanged for silver one or two.
Due to the implementation of a strict exchange system, the value of the currency was relatively stable in the early ten years of the issuance of banknotes. According to the "Classics of the Classics and The Law of Banknotes", "Print branches, and have a number of years." "This is the fourteen years from the first year of the Central Unification to the first decade of the First Century, and the printed Central Unification banknotes are hovering among the tens of thousands of ingots. Therefore, the value of the currency at that time did not fall, and there was no evil consequence of inflation.
However, the good times did not last long, and in less than twenty years, the Central Unified Banknote began to depreciate again.
By the thirteenth year of the Yuan Dynasty (1276), the Yuan court moved almost all the gold and silver of the Zhulu Pingzhun Treasury to Dadu, and in the nineteenth year of the Yuan Dynasty, it announced that private trading of gold and silver was prohibited. Since then, the Yuan Dynasty's Central Government banknotes have actually become non-convertible government banknotes.
At that time, paper money was issued to fill the deficit and more and more financial deficits, so the central government depreciated faster. The Yuan court had to reform the "false malpractice" of the Central Unification Banknote. Prime Minister Lu Shirong was commissioned to "rectify the banknote law" to advocate the printing of wrangled coupons, the minting of copper coins in parallel with banknotes, and the restoration of the free trading of private gold and silver.
He believes that many of the excessive issuance of paper money are caused by financial deficiencies. Therefore, he proposed measures such as "reducing the encroachment of power", "re-selling the city", "making the market easy to tax", "gugu", and "leveling the Zhou Urgent Treasury, lightening its monthly interest rate, and lending to the common people".
Therefore, in the seventeenth year of the Yuan Dynasty (1280 AD), the "ZhiyuanBao Banknote" was printed, and the banknote surface was from five texts to two consecutive eleven kinds, each of which was the five consecutive "Zhongtong Bao Banknote", which passed together with the rectified Zhongtong banknote, and abolished the popularity of copper coins, and thus entered the era of Yuan banknotes.
As the earliest non-exchangeable paper money regulation in China and even in the world, the "Zhiyuanbao Banknote Passage Painting" can be said to be very complete. Many aspects such as face value, issuance, circulation, exchange and many other links that should be paid attention to in the process of non-cashing banknote issuance based on modern perspectives have clear provisions.
At the same time, the "Strip Painting" also strengthened the government's management of reserves, changed the original monthly regular inspection to every half month, and made strict precepts against forgery, theft, misappropriation, or "lax prohibition, stagnation, loss of public and private" and other corrupt behaviors.
Although the Yuan court is so strict in the financial sector, it is still unable to suppress inflation.
In the tenth year of the Shun Emperor(1350), the banknote price was set, the Zhongtong banknote was abolished, the "Zhitong Banknote Law" was established, the "Zhongtong Banknote" was issued in parallel with the Zhiyuan banknote, and the "Zhizheng Tongbao" money was minted, the price of which was determined with the Zhizheng banknote, and the circulation of old money in the past was restored.
Yuan Ting originally wanted to look forward to passing the "use of copper coins with the past generations" and "the method of real money". However, at this time, inflation is becoming more and more serious, and the trend of currency depreciation is difficult to recover
From then until the fall of the Yuan Dynasty, paper money remained the main currency. Paper money was also issued during the Ming and Qing dynasties, but it was not very popular, and the circulation of paper money in large quantities was still after modern times.