Chinese Own Silver Coins and Bank Notes

Stephen Tai
Mar.02, 1998

(1) Silver Coin in 7 Mace and 2 Candareens (1 Dollar) Minted by Kwang-Tung Province. Undated. (1890)	(3) Silver Coin Paper of 10 Dollars Issued by Kwang-Tung Official Monetary Bureau. Dated 1905
(2) Silver Coin in 7 Mace and 2 Candareens (1 Dollar) Minted by Hu-Peh Province. Undated. (1893)	(4) Silver Coin Paper of 5 Dollars Issued by Bank of Communications in Canton. Dated 1909

After witnessing the domestic currency market being dominated by foreign coins. Many officials of the Chinese government started worrying and raising their warning: Should the situation be continued, the loss of Chinese government will not only be its national dignity, but also the control of monetary system and tremendous financial interests. They proposed to the Empire, the best way to stop it, is to produce Chinese own silver coins, use them to beat up all the foreign counterparts, and kick those foreign coins out of China.
After debating for years by the bureaucratic systems in the Empire, the first official silver coin sets was eventually issued and available to the public in the 16^th year of Kuang Hsu (1890) by Kwang-Tung Province (#1), and then, Hu-Peh Province in 1893 (#2)... And many other provinces had also minted their local silver coins.
The Central government was too late to uniform the pattern of silver coins, or to monopolize the right for issuing coins. When the Central government tried to do so, the market order had been in a mess, and the reign of Ching was about to be overthrown. Foreign coins had never been expel from China, until 20 some years later.
With a view to compete with foreign bank notes, many local governments also issued theirs (#3, #4), most of them are nice looking, but not in a national uniformed standard.