Eastern exchange, currency and finance . Hankow, about the year 1897. At themoment its worth is 1,000 cash, less 12 per cent.; that isto say, the value to a holder in China would be 880 cash. The position is well described in the China Year Bookfor 1916, which says— Bank notes are issued by numerous native banksand Provincial Governments, and add to the financialchaos, inasmuch as these issues are not always restrictedby considerations of adequate reserves for redemption. That certainly was the position during the first year or soof the new Chinese Repubhc: both the Central and Pro-vincial Gov
Eastern exchange, currency and finance . Hankow, about the year 1897. At themoment its worth is 1,000 cash, less 12 per cent.; that isto say, the value to a holder in China would be 880 cash. The position is well described in the China Year Bookfor 1916, which says— Bank notes are issued by numerous native banksand Provincial Governments, and add to the financialchaos, inasmuch as these issues are not always restrictedby considerations of adequate reserves for redemption. That certainly was the position during the first year or soof the new Chinese Repubhc: both the Central and Pro-vincial Government issued notes alongside the banks, and,added to this, the Republican Government found itselfface to face with the serious state of affairs caused by theenormous paper issues which had been put into circula-tion during the Revolution; the mihtary authorities, leftto themselves, flooded the country with large quantitiesof military notes, which, on the return to more peacefultimes, fell into such bad odour and depreciated to such. 12o^; M< w CO U Wo CHINA 351 an extent that the Government were obliged to takeimmediate steps to redeem them. The China Year Book gives a return made in 1915 ofthe amount of paper money in circulation, totalling$172,000,000. This return, however, seems to includenotes which were known to have been circulating in 1913-14, as, practically from the beginning of 1914, steps—somewhat halting perhaps—^were taken for the gradualredemption of large masses of paper in existence. Most of the note issues showed heavy depreciation, andthe discount on their face value varied from 10 to 44 percent. Apart from the depreciation arising cut of theindiscriminate issues by the military authorities, there islittle doubt that a large number of notes were issued andpassed into circulation without adequate records orregisters of the numbers, amounts, and other necessarydetails being kept; then, during the Revolution, quantitiesof the notes were stolen and, as
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Keywords: ., bookcentury1900, bookdecade1910, booksubjectc, booksubjectfinance
