Chinese money and monetary system, 1800–2000

This chapter summarizes the historical evolution of development in Chinese money and monetary regimes from the eighteenth century to about 1950. It develops a simple conceptual framework based on the relative costs of assessing the inherent value of the currencies of different denomination. It reveals the importance of political and economic changes as impacting the evolving structural change in the use of copper, silver currencies, and paper money in both the private and public financial sectors and institutions from the start of the Opium War in mid-nineteenth century and the end of the Civil War in the 1950s