page_title: Economic history of China before 1912
section_title: Ming commerce and currency
hierarchical_section_title: Economic history of China before 1912 / Late imperial era / Ming dynasty (1368–1644) / Ming commerce and currency
caption_attribution_description: English: Palace Museum, Beijing. Covered red jar with yellow design of dragon and sea Jiajing Reign, Ming Dynasty. 1521-1567.
context_page_description: The economic history of China covers thousands of years and the region has undergone alternating cycles of prosperity and decline. China, for last two millennia, was one of the world's largest and most advanced economies. Economic historians usually divide China's history into three periods: the pre-imperial era before the rise of Qin; the early imperial era from Qin to the rise of the Song; and the late imperial era, from Song to the fall of the Qing.
  Neolithic agriculture had developed in China by roughly 8,000 BCE. Stratified Bronze Age cultures, such as Erlitou, emerged by the third millennium BCE. Under the Shang and Western Zhou, a dependent labor force worked in large-scale foundries and workshops to produce bronzes and silk for the elite. The agricultural surpluses produced by the manorial economy supported these early handicraft industries as well as urban centers and considerable armies. This system began to disintegrate after the collapse of the Western Zhou in 771 BCE, leaving China fragmented during the Spring and Autumn and Warring States eras.
  As the feudal system collapsed, most legislative power transferred from the nobility to local kings.
context_section_description: Zhu Yuanzhang had promoted foreign trade as a source of revenue while he was a rebel, but sharply curtailed this with a series of sea bans (haijin) once in power. These proclaimed the death penalty for private foreign traders and exile for their family and relatives in 1371; the foreign ports of Guangzhou, Quanzhou, and Ningbo were closed in 1384.
  After the ´voyages to the western oceans´ between 1405 and 1433, which had shown China to be technically ahead shipbuilding, a restrictive closed-door policy towards long-distance trade was adopted.
  Legal trade was restricted to tribute delegations sent to or by official representatives of foreign governments, although this took on an epic scale under the Yongle Emperor with Zheng He's treasure voyages to Southeast Asia, India, and eastern Africa. The policies exacerbated "Japanese" piracy along the coasts, with many Chinese merchants joining their ranks in an illegal trade network the Ming were unable to curtail. The sea bans were finally ended in 1567, with trade only prohibited to states at war with the throne. Needham estimated the trade between the end of the ban and the end of the dynasty (1567–1644) at about 300 million taels.
  In addition to small base-metal coins, the Ming issued fiat paper currency as the standard currency from the beginning of the reign until 1450, by which point – like its predecessors – it was suffering from hyperinflation and rampant counterfeiting. (In 1425, Ming notes were trading at about 0.014% of its original value under the Hongwu Emperor.) Monetary needs were initially met by bullion trading in silver sycee, but a shortage of silver in the mid-15th century caused a severe monetary contraction and forced a great deal of trade to be conducted by barter. China had not been much interested in European or Japanese goods but the silver of Iwami Ginzan and Potosí was too profitable and important to restrict. Inflows of Japanese and Spanish silver monetized China's economy, and Spanish dollars became a common medium of exchange.
  The size of the late Ming economy is a matter of conjecture, with Twitchett claiming it to be the largest and wealthiest nation on earth and Maddison estimating its per capita GDP as average within Asia and lower than Europe's.
caption: A porcelain jar from the reign of the Jiajing Emperor (r. 1521–1567); Chinese export porcelain in the late Ming targeted foreign markets such as those in Europe.[202]
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