Valley Emperor

Vol 2 Chapter 1282: Great Tang Empire ‘Gen’

It was almost impossible for her to be able to pull such a huge carriage and more than 40 people on it with only two horses.

But that's it, this huge carriage full of passengers was actually pulled up by two horses, and then moved slowly on the rails!

This is far beyond Song Wanzi's imagination!

However, although she was shocked, Song Wanzi was someone who had seen the world anyway. At the same time, she was born in a famous family, and she would not easily express her shock, so although she was shocked in her heart, she still pretended to be the same as everyone else, and she was accustomed to it. .

When the driver collected the fare one by one, she, like her colleagues, took out ten cents of paper money to pay for the fare.

The fare of ten cents for a car is naturally a bit expensive for the poor people of today, but it is not too expensive for a big city like Shanghai.

According to statistics, the per capita income in Shanghai, especially represented by ordinary workers in major factories, is about two yuan per month.

According to the recent exchange ratio of copper coins and silver coins, in general, one tael of silver is equivalent to 960 coins.

That is, the per capita income is about 2,000 yuan.

Of course, in the monthly income of 2,000 yuan, many still need to support their families, so this kind of public carriage is not something that everyone is willing to ride. For ordinary people, it is naturally no problem to do it occasionally, but if you want to If you want to sit and commute to and from get off work every day, usually it is only the middle and high-level groups with relatively high incomes.

But what makes Song Wanzi feel strange is that most of the people who pay the fare use paper money instead of coins as she saw in Busan.

The ten-cent-value banknote is one of the most widely circulated banknotes in the Tang Empire, and the circulation is second only to the one-cent-value banknote.

When he first came to Busan, Song Wanzi was still a little skeptical about whether these light and fluffy papers could really be used as money, but he soon knew that this kind of paper money could really be used as money, but only in the When I was in Busan, many people didn't accept it. Only some big merchants would accept these banknotes.

The empire began to issue banknotes very early, but the application scale of banknotes was relatively limited in the early days, mainly because the people did not trust banknotes enough, even if the empire has clearly stipulated by law that banknotes are legal tender, and no one has to accept banknotes .

But in real life, people still don't trust paper money!

Especially in some remote areas, ordinary people still only trust coins.

Different from the difficulty of paper currency promotion, the new types of coins issued by the empire have been greatly welcomed by the people!

The Imperial Mint began issuing gold, silver, and copper coins with a uniform content very early on, and they have been very popular since the very beginning!

Just when Song Wanzi used paper money to pay the fare, in the courtyard of Jinling City Palace, senior officials of the Finance Department were reporting monetary policy reform measures to Li Xuan!

The monetary policy of the empire has actually been reformed in the last ten years, but the reform is not thorough!

This is mainly because China has traditionally had no unified monetary policy, copper coins, silver and gold are all mixed, and there is no clear fixed exchange rate.

Even in today's Datang Empire, the gold coins, silver coins and copper coins it issues are independent of each other, and there is no unified and fixed exchange rate.

It is often the case that the market is on the go. When the price of gold in the market is high, the exchange rate of gold coins is high.

With the progress of overseas trade, a large amount of silver was continuously imported into the empire, which directly caused the continuous depreciation of silver and the continuous appreciation of copper and gold.

The major banks of the empire will adjust the exchange ratio on their own according to the price fluctuations of precious metals in the market.

The currency exchange ratio of the empire fluctuates greatly, which has affected the empire's financial policy and even people's livelihood to a certain extent. For this, Li Xuan has to pay attention.

In the early days of the empire, a mixed currency system of gold, silver and copper was implemented. It can even be said that there was no clear currency standard. Later, after the continuous devaluation of silver was discovered, in order to prevent the financial and even people's livelihood risks caused by the devaluation of silver.

Hence the plan to hoard gold and prepare for the transition to the gold standard.

For this reason, when the empire gradually began to require overseas trade, it strictly implemented the system of unified settlement of gold.

Subsequently, large-scale trade in the country was gradually guided to be settled in gold.

It's just that even today, the domestic gold reserves are still insufficient, and it is difficult to completely support the huge financial structure of the empire to implement the gold standard. For this reason, the empire has to continue to use the mixed standard, and it is difficult to completely convert to a single gold standard.

As for the single silver standard, it has long been abandoned, because without the adoption of the silver standard, a large amount of silver has entered Datang through overseas trade. Even if the Datang Empire requires overseas trade to be settled in gold, there are still A large number of foreign merchants came to trade with a whole ship of silver.

In this case, silver is already a large amount of input. If it is clearly stipulated that the silver standard is adopted, then the input of silver will become extremely terrifying.

At that time, foreign merchants will use a lot of silver to buy a lot of materials from the Tang Empire!

And silver is something that cannot be eaten or worn, and its industrial use is not very big at present. To be honest, this broken thing does not have much effect on the industrialization of the empire.

In addition, as a currency, this thing does not maintain its value, and the annual output is getting larger and larger, and more importantly, the empire cannot control the production of silver at all, because now Fusang and the Americas are big producers of silver, it is difficult for the empire to control these The local silver production, especially in the Americas, the Spaniards are said to have discovered a large number of silver mines in the Americas, and they are mining them desperately, and then transporting them to the world to buy various goods.

If one goes wrong, it will become that the Spaniards get a lot of silver, and then buy a lot of goods from the empire, while the Tang people can only stare at the pile of silver!

In Li Xuan's view, this trade model is similar to the dollar trade of later generations. Americans also print dollars desperately, and then buy a large amount of goods from all over the world, especially from China, and all they need to pay is a pile of paper. That's it...

Although silver is not paper, in essence, there is not much difference.

In order to prevent this, in order to let the empire completely control the currency power, Li Xuan is the unswerving preparation to promote the gold standard!

Although it is said that the gold controlled by the empire is not much now, and a lot of gold production is not in the hands of the empire, but gold has a huge advantage over silver, that is, scarcity.

Scarcity is destined to make gold an irreplaceable currency!

This is also the fundamental reason why the empire has promoted gold settlement on a large scale in recent years!

However, even if the gold calculation is promoted, under the current chaotic standard system, the price fluctuation of precious metals will still greatly affect the stability of the financial market. In order to completely stabilize the financial market, it will not fluctuate too much, causing exchange troubles Large-scale fluctuations in prices!

The Datang Empire also began to vigorously promote the paper currency system, trying to separate currency from precious metals, but it was not too successful. Although people gradually accepted paper currency, they still regarded paper currency as a supplement to metal currency.

To this end, Li Xuan decided to speed up the domestic monetary policy reform. The current chaotic monetary policy is not acceptable. Sooner or later, big trouble will occur.

Of course, it is not feasible to directly implement the gold standard in one step, because the domestic silver stock is too large, and if the gold standard is directly implemented and the silver standard is abolished, it will cause big trouble.

Therefore, Li Xuan decided to implement the dual-standard system of gold and silver, but at the same time as implementing the dual-standard system, he adopted official guidance and linked the currency directly to gold.

It is no longer the traditional metal currency of the past, but the imperial currency with legal significance, and a unified currency exchange ratio is formulated!

Today's report is the Ministry of Finance reporting relevant monetary measures to Li Xuan.

"According to the comprehensive demonstration of our colleagues in the Ministry of Finance, the currency system has basically been determined. According to His Majesty's instructions, we have initially formulated a new and new dual-standard system."

"The new dual-standard system will be improved on the original dual-standard system, the biggest feature of which will be the complete collection of coinage rights, and the official establishment of the exchange ratio of gold and silver coins!

The private minting of gold and silver coins will be completely banned, and offenders will be punished with serious crimes. At the same time, the Empire will not recognize the domestic circulation and payment rights of gold and silver coins in other regions. The gold and silver coins that can be circulated in the country will only be sold by the Empire. The Mint is uniformly minted. "

"At the same time, the exchange ratio of gold and silver coins in domestic circulation is set by the official guidance, adjusted according to the gold and silver ratio in the market, and based on the price of gold!"

"According to this system, the empire will issue a brand new imperial gold coin, one imperial yuan, with a gold content of one cent and six cents. According to the exchange ratio of one tael of gold to six taels of silver in the existing gold and silver market, this empire will The currency value of Yuan is also equivalent to a tael of silver.”

"The newly minted one-dollar gold coins will be circulated at the same time as the existing existing silver coins, but new silver coins will not be minted into the market, and many existing silver coins will be gradually recycled, but all official pricing in the future will be Unified use of imperial yuan as the calculation standard!"

"At the same time, due to the limited gold reserves, the large-scale issuance of banknotes will be guided. Instead of distinguishing gold coin coupons, silver coin coupons, and copper coin coupons, the unified imperial yuan banknotes will be adopted, and the old banknotes will be recycled and exchanged uniformly. For the new imperial dollar notes."

"At the same time, guide the public to use paper money as much as possible in daily transactions. To this end, we will work with the tax department to promote the application of paper money!"

Li Xuan listened to this set of monetary system~www.wuxiaspot.com~ Although it sounds similar to the current mixed standard, gold and silver are still used together, but the biggest feature is that it is linked to gold.

To a certain extent, this is also a kind of gold standard, but it actually allows silver coins to continue to circulate!

But the focus is not actually on the gold standard or the silver standard. The biggest special feature of this currency reform is to determine the concept of the empire's "Yuan", and at the same time to promote the issuance of paper money on a large scale according to this concept.

The industrial revolution has already begun, and it is about to enter the era of industrialization on a large scale. It is impossible to directly trade precious metals in kind!

In the past ten years, the application of banknotes has been limited, and now, the empire is ready to directly promote the application of banknotes by administrative means!

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