Silver And Modern China (1890-1935),

This thesis talks about the currency, the relationship of the currency and the financial institutions, the relationship of the currency and macroeconomic, and various approaches of economic development in modern China(1890-1935). According to the thesis, there was in modern China no standard money in the strict sense but a currency system dependent on silver as the centre, which was dynamic and solid and evolved on the way to the silver standard. Coinage had some influence on the birth and development of financial systems, and therefore the currency system had a close relationship with the birth, the development and the formation of financial systems in modern China. Foreign banks had some characteristics of the latent central bank because of its controlling the import and export of the silver of modern China, while old-style private banks also shared the profits of the mechanism of this central bank by mastering the rights of liquidating and making prices in the money markets. The domestic banks were growing up gradually with the status of silver rising and large quantities of silver imported from abroad to China. Meanwhile, this sort of development prominently showed the attributes of the finance and the government. In addition, the gold market and the foreign exchange market, affiliated to the silver market, were secondary markets in modern China. While the currency system of silver as the centre was developing toward and concentrating on the silver standard, international money system also witnessed the process of the development, the maturation and the alteration of the gold standard. Accordingly, international silver prices would be related to China's macroscopic money supply, which made China's economy not only connected with the international economy, e.g. the rate of exchange between silver and gold, but also independent with its characteristics, e.g. stagnancy in crisis. The fact that the too higher price of silver would cause the silver out flow and domestic deflation, while the lower price of silver could lead to sufficient money supply as well as mild inflation, influenced China's macroeconomic. There were differences between China's economic development and othercountries' in modern China. The Chinese government often played an important part in economic activities; as a result, currency reforms frequently conflicted with the stable public revenues. In the course of the development of the currency system, the choices of systems were often subjected to the stability of public revenues, which was the evolution of the currencies on the level of systems in modern China. It was the currency reform in 1935 that pushed the currency system of modern China into the situation of managing currencies, and thus it ushered in a new era in the history of currency and economy in modern China.