page_title: Da Ming Baochao
section_title: History
hierarchical_section_title: Da Ming Baochao / History
caption_attribution_description: English: Copperplate for printing the Great Ming one string banknote. Ming Dynasty (1368-1644).
context_page_description: The Da Ming Baochao was a series of banknotes issued during the Ming dynasty in China. They were first issued in 1375 under the Hongwu Emperor. Although initially the Da Ming Baochao paper money was successful, the fact that it was a fiat currency and that the government largely stopped accepting these notes caused the people to lose faith in them as a valid currency causing the price of silver relative to paper money to increase. The negative experiences with inflation that the Ming dynasty had witnessed signaled the Manchus to not repeat this mistake until the first Chinese banknotes after almost 400 years were issued again in response to the Taiping Rebellion under the Qing dynasty's Xianfeng Emperor during the mid-19th century.
context_section_description: The first banknotes of the Ming dynasty bore the reign title of the Hongwu Emperor and were issued in the year 1375, a year prior he created the Supervisorate of Paper Money (寶鈔提舉司, bǎo chāo tí jǔ sī) to supervise their production. The initial series of the Da Ming Tongxing Baochao (大明通行寶鈔, dà míng tōng xíng bǎo chāo) were made of mulberry bark. Notes with the denomination of 1 guàn could be exchanged for one thousand bronze cash coins throughout all of the Ming Empire, this was illustrated by an image of a string of bronze cash coins split into ten segments, smaller denominations contained images fewer segments of the string and were issued in 100, 200, 300, 400, and 500 wén. The size of the 1 guàn was 36.4 × 22 cm making them the biggest paper notes ever produced in the history of China. All paper notes from this first series of the Da Ming Baochao contained the inscription that they were a valid currency issued by the Palace Secretariat (中書省, zhōng shū shěng), other texts explained that forgers would face punishment and those that expose these counterfeiters shall receive a high reward, finally the date of issuance would written with the nianhao (or reign era) first, then followed the Chinese characters for year, month, and day. Contrary to the paper money issued by the Song and Yuan dynasties, the Da Ming Baochao didn't have any geographical restrictions imposed upon them, nor did they have an expiration date. Paper notes issued by the Ming dynasty contained the text that they would circulate forever, possibly reflecting the idea that the Ming state would be there to accept these banknotes forever as well.
  The Da Ming Baochao also wasn't backed by any forms of hard currency or reserves and the government never set any limitations on their production. These circumstances all lead to the paper currency of the Ming dynasty to start suffering from inflation, in the year 1376 new legislation was introduced to remove older more worn out notes from circulation by having them replaced for new banknotes at the cost of a fee known as "Gongmofei" (工墨費, gōng mò fèi) which was set at 30 wén per paper note. However in the year 1380 a new law restricted the replacement of paper notes which were unreadable, this caused the people to accept these older banknotes at reduced value, during this time the government stopped accepting worn out banknotes and in some cases didn't even accept banknotes which frustrated the people. During this period the government of the Ming dynasty only threw more banknotes on the market in various forms such as military salaries (軍餉, jūn xiǎng), while they themselves hardly accepted or replaced any existing paper money causing the people to lose trust in the Da Ming Baochao. In the year 1380 the Imperial Secretariat was abolished, and the Ministry of Revenue (戶部, hù bù) was made responsible for the manufacture of the Da Ming Baochao paper notes, the Ministry of Works (工部, gōng bù) for that of the copper-alloy Hongwu Tongbao cash coins. In the year 1389 the government of the Ming dynasty released treasury notes with lower denominations "as a help to the people" (以便民用) and improve internal trade, these were the denominations of 10, 20, 30, 40, and 50 wén and depicted unstrung cash coins. Under the reign of the Yongle Emperor the Da Ming Baochao was fixed to be the exclusive valid paper money for the rest of the dynasty and because of this the paper currency of the Ming would see no further alterations or reforms.
  Overprinting led to severe hyperinflation and distrust of paper currency. The Hongzhi Emperor and Zhengde Emperor abolished the production and use of banknotes. In the year 1535, 1 guàn of paper money rather than being exchanged for 1000 copper-alloy cash coins was valued at only 0.28th of a coin. A proposal was made in 1643 to reintroduce paper money in order to finance the expenditures caused by the difficult situation that the Ming dynasty faced at the time confronted by the rebel Li Zicheng.
  The Bank of England planted a small stand of mulberry trees as an homage to these banknotes in the 1920s.
caption: A printing plate used for the production of 1 guàn banknotes.
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