The study explores the problem of counterfeited paper money in Song dynasty[宋代], focusing mainly Tang-Zhongyou[唐仲友]'s impeachment by Zhu-Xi[朱熹]. Because of the limitation in Zhu-Xi's impeachment report against Tang-Zhongyou's corruptions, it is diffic ...
The study explores the problem of counterfeited paper money in Song dynasty[宋代], focusing mainly Tang-Zhongyou[唐仲友]'s impeachment by Zhu-Xi[朱熹]. Because of the limitation in Zhu-Xi's impeachment report against Tang-Zhongyou's corruptions, it is difficult to identify whether there were certain problems between two people. I judge that Zhu-Xi as a great Li-Xue scholar[理學者] had no felt personal animosity toward Tang-Zhongyou before the impeachment.
As a matter of official duty, Zhu-Xi performed the impeachment. But he held office for a short time in Zhedong[浙東] and stopped over in Taizhou[臺州] during his inspection tour[巡視]. Because Tang-Zhongyou's corruptions were not that Zhu-Xi witnessed but that he heard from the people, there are some doubts about that.
Judging from this fact that Tang-Zhongyou wrote 'Liujingjie'[六經解], 'Huangdijingshijingtu'[帝王經世圖譜] and 'Xuezhaiwenji'[說齋文集] etc., and published 'Xunzi'[荀子], 'Yangzi fayan'[楊子法言], Zhongshuo'[中說], and 'Changlixianshengji'[昌黎先生集], it is difficult to see that he had committed so much atrocities as Zhu-Xi asserted. Because of this, it also raise question about that Tang-Zhongyou made a person conuterfeit Huizi[會子]. But it is obvious that Zhang-Hui[張輝] printed twice counterfeited paper money. The important point is that it can be estimated that counterfeiting activities were so serious about that time through the impeachment issue.
The problem of counterfeit paper money in Song dynasty began to start printing Jiaozi[交子] that is the first paper money in China history. The government of Song Dynasty had been constantly trying to solve the problem. Befor the emergence of paper money, it had used the metalic currency in China. While forging metalic currency were needed a lot of money, counterfeiting paper money were able to get a long harvest for a little investment. Therefore, counterfeiting paper money had been widely prevalent in Song dynasty.
In northern Song dynasty, Jiaozi was only used and then many kinds of paper money were issued and circulated in southern Song dynasty. Consequently, counterfeiting were more prevalent in southern Song dynasty rather than in Northern. Circulating counterfeited paper money widely caused the huge burdens and losses for the government. The government of Song dynasty had the monetary system that it fixed Jie[界], a expiration date, and had to change the old paper money with new at the time of expiration. In this process, the government suffered the losses each time changing the illegal old paper money with new.
The ways to counterfeit paper money in Song dynasty were counterfeiting the printing block, the expiration date, the face value and perchasing 'Huidi'[會底] from government official and so on.
The government had been constantly trying to solve the counterfeiting problem. In Song dynasty, the law against counterfeiting were enacted and enforced but the crime were not disappear and continued. As a result, the government applied much more rigorously the las than before, improved the technique of paper money making, strengthened the management and supervision of the government official and craftsman concerned, and gave them better treatment to prevent their corruption.
However, these methods were ineffective to prevent the illegal paper money. The most fundamental problem was that Chaofa[鈔法], a law concerned in the issue of paper money, had not been vigorously enforced in it's first stage. In these ways, the prevalent of counterfeiting paper money was the cause of the unreasonable of Chaofa, the inconvenience of change old paper money with new, and the simple issurance of paper money. As noted in the body, the provision of Jie and the rule of the amount of paper money were not followed. It threw the country into disorder by issuing Huizi in excessive amounts and putting both old and new paper money in circulation as extending the expiration date as one Jie from on a three year cycle to on a six year cycle, on a nine year cycle in the era of Duanping[端平年間], southern Song dynasty.
In conclusion, the government of southern Song dynasty was mostly responsible for the problem of counterfeiting paper money. The government should had been wary of supervising the issue and circulation of paper money but the government neglected the responsibility according as the overissue of paper money on financial grounds. The government was not inattentive to the issue and circulation, but enforced several systems to solve the problem. The overissue of paper money, however, had exceeded the government control, had the bad effects on both government and private sector, and wreaked havoc on the governments finances in Song dynasty.