Monetary reform is a long and arduous task. The essence of most monetary reforms is to plunder private wealth, which is why they are so difficult to implement. Take Wang Mang, who usurped the Han throne, as an example: he carried out four monetary reforms during his reign, all of which ended in failure.
The reform in the first year of his Shijianguo era was an absolute disaster. He abolished the Han Dynasty’s five-zhu coins and the knife-money introduced in his first reform, replacing them with twenty-eight types of currency made of gold, silver, tortoise shell, cowrie, and copper. With so many types of currency and complex exchange rates, the difficulty of circulation is easy to imagine. For convenience, the common people continued to use the old five-zhu coins. In response, Wang Mang issued orders to ban old currency and even prohibited the possession of copper and charcoal; anyone found with them was charged with the crime of private minting, with punishment extending to their neighbors in groups of five. Yet, even under such high-pressure tactics, the new currency failed. Often, some things simply do not bow to human will.
It is precisely because of these historical failures that Emperor Chongzhen did not issue paper money, but instead introduced silver coins. Do the common people recognize silver? They are stubborn. Their stubbornness lies in the fact that, aside from silver, everything else is meaningless. In essence, this monetary reform of the Great Ming Dynasty was…
Chapter 651