In our familiar understanding, the Song Dynasty has always been a poor and weak dynasty. But historian Chen Yinque said: "China civilization was very creative during the Zhao and Song Dynasties after thousands of years of development." In fact, although the Song Dynasty was weak, it was by no means poor. At that time, Chinese civilization not only reached the peak of ancient China in science and technology, but also reached the peak in the financial field that China people were not good at, and its crystallization was the world's first paper money. ?
In the second year of Song Zongtian (AD 1024), the Yizhou government, after full preparation, began to issue the world's first paper money guaranteed by public power-Jiaozi. In fact, Yizhou society at this time has long been accustomed to using paper money for business, and the endorsement of the Song Dynasty court is just to crown Jiaozi, a financial innovation.
We know that the commercial economy in Song Dynasty was very developed. Porcelain, silk and tea in Song Dynasty were always out of stock in international trade. In Guangzhou, Quanzhou, Hangzhou, Mizhou and other seaports, merchant ships in the Song Dynasty transported inland handicraft products to Japan, India, Persia, Arabia and Southeast Asia. As the Song Dynasty was at the center of international trade, the merchants who conducted transnational trade used copper coins minted by Song officials as the settlement currency. Finally, Japan, South Korea and Southeast Asian countries use Song copper coins directly imported through international trade as domestic trade, and the historical position of Song copper coins is above the current US dollar.
Other countries used Song copper coins for their own trade, which affirmed the credit and economy of Song Dynasty, but also brought huge problems to Song Dynasty economy: currency outflow and currency shortage, which was the most serious in Sichuan Province, which lacked copper in ancient times, that is, Yizhou area at that time.
At present, you can find a lot of information by entering "Sichuan Copper Mine" into a search engine. However, people in the Song Dynasty could not develop copper resources in Sichuan without advanced exploration technology, and copper coins minted by Song officials would flow overseas. If Sichuanese don't have non-copper coins, they will return to the primitive society of barter, so Sichuan can only cast money with iron.
The value of iron is much lower than that of copper. In the market price at that time, the ratio of copper coins to iron coins was 10 1, and the problems that could always be solved with copper coins needed 10 iron coins. According to historical records, it takes 20,000 pence to buy cloth in Sichuan, weighing 500 Jin. Young people with 500 Jin of iron money also need four or five people to move, buy a house and release the land. Can iron money alone move for seven or eight days?
In order to facilitate the circulation of money, a unique financial institution-Jiaoziwu appeared in Sichuan. The iron money that is inconvenient for customers to carry is stored in Jiaozi Store, which issues a deposit certificate to customers, is ready to exchange iron money for customers at any time, and charges customers a handling fee according to the amount and time of deposit. The deposit certificate held by this friend is a friend, and the friend issued by the people is also called a personal friend. How did the paper currency cross appear in the Northern Song Dynasty, and why did it end after its prosperity?
In fact, Sichuan's extreme monetary system is one of the reasons for Jiaozi's prosperity. Without the rapid development of science and technology in the Northern Song Dynasty, Jiaozi could not be accepted by the society. Now I dare not accept counterfeit money when I buy things. People in the Song Dynasty are no exception. In order to prevent someone from forging the cross-piece, people in Song Dynasty used exquisite printed copper plate, red, black and blue overprint, watermark carving, production, wear-resistant special paper, on-site signature and stamp to achieve the purpose of anti-counterfeiting. Indeed, it is more difficult to make jiaozi now than to print money.
After jiaozi was accepted by businessmen, people found that they didn't have to come to jiaozi store to exchange iron money for every transaction. So jiaozi became a medium of exchange and assumed a part of the role of money. Initially, the denomination was temporarily filled in according to the customer's deposit amount, and later, a fixed denomination jiaozi was developed, which is very convenient for jiaozi to be used as a monetary activity. At this time, the jiaozi circulating in the market can be simply understood as a credit note with 100% reserve.
With the popularity of Wu Jiaojiao, it is found that getting some deposits does not affect the cash in Wu Jiaojiao and the credit of shops. However, with the failure of investment, disputes and lawsuits caused by Wu Jiaojiao's failure to cash in also increased, which triggered the first Jiao Jiao crisis. During the Jingdezhen period (A.D. 1004- 1007), Zhang Yong, Yizhou, in order to quell the lawsuit caused by this, handed over the commercial management right within its jurisdiction to sixteen wealthy businessmen with good reputation and abundant capital. At the same time, the government supervised the issuance of Jiaozhou, and the non-governmental Jiaozhou reached its peak, and the full reserve system of Jiaozhou also turned into a partial reserve system. The financial resources of the 16th National Congress of the Communist Party of China, which monopolizes the right to issue currency in Sichuan, are rolling in.