page_title: Paper money of the Qing dynasty
section_title: Hubu Guanpiao and other early Qing paper money
hierarchical_section_title: Paper money of the Qing dynasty / History / Hubu Guanpiao and other early Qing paper money
caption_attribution_description: English: A banknote issued by the Qing Dynasty. The warning text reads: 戶部奏行 官票凡願 將官票兌 換銀錢者 與銀一律 並准按部 定章程搭 交官項偽 造者依律 治罪不貸 (hù bù zòu xíng guān piào fán yuàn jiàng guān piào duì huàn yínqián zhě yǔ yín yīlǜ bìng zhǔn àn bù dìng zhāngchéng dā jiāo guān xiàng wěi zào zhě yī lǜ zhìzuì bù dài) At the bottom of the banknote.
context_page_description: The paper money of the Qing dynasty was periodically used alongside a bimetallic coinage system of copper-alloy cash coins and silver sycees; paper money was used during different periods of Chinese history under the Manchu-led Qing as the Qing had learned from the previous experiences of the Song, Jurchen Jin, Mongol Yuan, and Ming dynasties with paper money where uncontrolled printing lead to hyperinflation. During the youngest days of the Qing dynasty paper money was used but this was quickly abolished as the government sought not to repeat history for a fourth time, however under the reign of the Xianfeng Emperor due to several large wars and rebellions the Qing government was forced to issue paper money again.
  The reason why the government was forced to reform the imperial monetary system with a very complex system during the Taiping Rebellion was because the rebels had blocked the access of mint metals from the southwest of China, but more money was still needed to fight the ongoing insurgency.
context_section_description: During the transition from Ming to Qing the Manchu government issued banknotes known as Hubu Guanpiao (戶部官票) or Shunzhi Guanpiao (順治官票) which were first issued in the year 1651 on initiative of the Minister of Revenue, Wei Xiangshu (魏象樞) during the war with the remnants of the Ming dynasty to cover the more immediate expenses of the Manchus; as the finances of the Qing during this period were in dire distress, these banknotes were declared void only a decade after their issued. Peng Xinwei suggests that the Manchus started issuing banknotes in response to the treasury of the Qing dynasty experiencing funding shortfalls which were occasioned by the a campaign to occupy the island of Zhoushan (near modern Shanghai). An annual amount of 128,000 guàn (貫) were issued, with a total sum of 1.28 million guàn being produced before they were abolished. The denominations of the Hubu Guanpiao followed the pattern of the Ming dynasty period paper notes, but as historiographical sources about the early Qing era paper money are scarce, not much can be known about them.
  After the Hubu Guanpiao it was only rarely suggested by court officials to reintroduce paper money to the Qing Empire. Among these were Cai Zhiding (蔡之定) in 1814 and Wang Yide (王懿德) in his treatise on money known as Qianbi Chuyan (錢幣芻言). Peng Xinwei suggested that the Manchu rulers of the Qing were very much atavistic towards the inflationary pressure that the earlier Jurchen Empire experienced after they had abused their ability to print Jiaochao banknotes. Modern scholars argue that the banknotes issued during the Shunzhi period, while only brief, likely entrenched the reluctance of the Qing dynasty to issue banknotes because this issue also proved inflationary confirming their fears.
  During this era, privately produced paper notes and promissory notes known as Sipiao (私票) were used in the Chinese market that were mostly issued by private banks (錢莊) and other merchants. These banknotes were known as like Huipiao (會票, "corporate notes"), Yinpiao (銀票, "silver notes"), or Qianpiao (錢票, "cash notes"). As is usual for China, the names designating privately produced banknotes varied greatly across the country, with names being used such as Pingtie (憑帖), Duitie (兌帖), Shangtie (上帖), Hupingtie (壺瓶帖), or Qitie (期帖). The denominations used on them varied greatly with some reaching as high as 5 diào (吊, "string of cash coins"). It has been suggested by Taiwanese economic historian Lin Man-houng that Chinese money shops did not start the production of their own private banknotes until the end of the Qianlong period. These shops were very likely to have been more developed in Northern China, where these money shops produced banknotes which were mostly denominated in cash coins, while banknotes from Southern China tended to be denominated in taels of silver. It is also possible that private-order banknotes could have emerged earlier in the 18th century and that their presence would become very common by the 1820s.
  By the middle of the 1800s various Western credit institutes and foreign banking corporations were operating in the Qing dynasty. During the late 1840s they began producing bills of exchange, promissory notes, or other forms of paper money for the Chinese market, which the Chinese referred to as Fanpiao (番票). This introduced modern credit instruments to the traditional Chinese business world and greatly bolstered the reformist monetary discourse in China and would later be emulated by homegrown Chinese modern banks. This affected both the private market and the imperial Chinese bureaucracy.
caption: A later made Da-Qing Hubu Guanpiao (大清戶部官票, dà qīng hù bù guān piào) of 1 tael (壹兩).
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