The land of Sichuan and Shu has a tradition of using iron coins. It has been hundreds of years since they trust iron coins and their own Jiaozi.

Whether it is the people or the rich, they basically agree with the use and circulation of iron coins.

After all, it is still a physical currency. It is hard to say that it will have no value. Even if it is not made into a currency, it will be valuable.

Although physical currencies will also experience explosive depreciation of paper money, the main reason is that the court's operations are too low.

The value of physical currency comes from itself, mainly depends on its own quality and weight. The biggest variable is the style of the court that issued the currency.

For example, Dong Zhuo's crazy and Sun Quan's extreme greed, he created a small amount of money or a big spring like Dong Zhuo, and he used one dollar as a thousand dollars without any guarantee. Then even physical currency would directly lose its circulation value.

As long as the court has a little bit of rules, the value of physical currency is still strong. For example, Song copper coins are famous for the world currency. The value is strong and the credit is high, and everyone is willing to use it.

The ones who were cheated were Jiaozi and Huizi, and the copper coins were of great value.

This is the case with copper coins. Although iron coins do not have such a large circulation area, they are also valuable. Therefore, there are many iron coins in the transactions between the Guanzhong provinces of the Ming Dynasty.

The Guanzhong Province of the Ming Dynasty, which had frequent economic exchanges with the Sichuan-Shu area, had copper coins and iron coins in parallel during the Northern Song Dynasty. This was the case during the Jin Dynasty's rule, and it was also the case after the Ming Dynasty established the Guanzhong Province, and it continued until now that there was no change.

But Su Yonglin doesn't like iron coins from the bottom of his heart.

The iron coins are too low in value, too heavy in weight, and too restrictive in commercial circulation. Sichuan and Shu themselves cannot stand this weight, and finally came up with Jiaozi as a replacement.

Moreover, iron is more unstable in chemical properties than copper, silver and gold, and is more likely to oxidize and rust. If it is left untouched, it is prone to large-scale rust and low value preservation efficiency. This makes Jiaozi, which appears as an improvement measure, often experiences value crises.

Therefore, after comprehensive consideration, Su Yonglin had already made the plan to completely abolish the iron coins by then, so that the Zhongdu treasury was not allowed to collect iron coins, taxes did not accept iron coins, and did not use iron coins as national reserves, but only copper coins were used.

This behavior caused some trouble for merchants in Guanzhong area, causing value and credit crisis in their hands, which caused them to protest, believing that the imperial court did this to be unfair to them.

However, Su Yonglin refused to change and clearly informed the Guanzhong merchants that the court could not accept iron coins as tax reserves, either using copper coins or white strips, and choose one of them.

But the court will recognize the value of iron coins for now.

The arm is not twisted, and after the court determines this, how could the Guanzhong merchants be the opponent of the court?

Despite this, for a considerable period of time at the beginning of the founding of the People's Republic of China, Su Yonglin was busy with various economic affairs and had no time to adjust his monetary policy, and temporarily expressed support for the long-formed folk tradition.

Apart from issuing white strips due to economic tension, it feels a bit unintentionally like planting willows and willows to form shade, and basically does not touch the currency situation.

And after all, Su Yonglin does not have any good plans to reform currency at present.

Of course, iron coins are not good, copper coins are also difficult, and physical currencies such as gold and silver are even more difficult.

Although Su Yonglin collected a large amount of gold and silver reserves from the nobles of the Jin Dynasty and the bureaucrats after being purged, landlords and powerful families, and included all these precious metals in the treasury to store them, the quantity could only roughly meet the gold and silver standard circulation in one region.

For example, in Yanyun area, Liaodong area, Guanzhong area, etc., if you want to carry out national changes, this kind of storage is simply not enough.

The lack of precious metals in China has indeed increased the difficulty of monetary reform to a considerable extent. The emperor's big moves in the Western Han Dynasty and the precious metal burial system that was popular at that time made the small amount of gold and silver sleep underground for a large amount of time and cannot be circulated.

It is not impossible to use copper coins, which were minted by the Southern Song Dynasty, for a long time. Anyway, the Southern Song Dynasty will be completely destroyed soon, and the currency they minted will be directly transformed into the Ming Dynasty currency.

But the problem is that the problem of deflation will always be a headache for the court and will affect the economic development of the Ming Dynasty at all times. If you want to get out of the shadow of deflation, you must find another way.

For example, start a great voyage to build American silver and use a huge amount of American silver to complete the silver-standard currency reform.

But it seems that it cannot be said that it is unrealistic at the moment. It is just that it is very difficult and takes a lot of time. You also need to conduct a large-scale navigation operation to explore the Americas.

This is definitely not impossible. Su Yonglin didn't believe that the people of Daming could not do what the Portuguese and Spanish could do back then, but the risk and difficulty were indeed a little greater.

There are quite a lot of silver in Japan and it is close to each other, but Japan itself is still using the Southern Song copper coins for circulation, and often uses the strategy of exchanged silver for copper coins to go back, further aggravating the situation of copper coins in the Southern Song Dynasty.

The silver of this small island country can add icing on the cake, without any timely help or play a decisive role.

Therefore, the reforms of the silver standard and the gold standard have always been in Su Yonglin's plan, but they have not been proposed.

The Ministry of Finance is very concerned about the currency issue and expressed dissatisfaction with the Ming Dynasty's use of copper and iron coins from the Southern Song Dynasty. It wants to change the status quo and use the Ming Dynasty's own currency to develop the economy.

In the absence of precious metals to build physical currencies, they hope to promote paper money reforms and free the Ming Dynasty from its dependence on metal currencies.

This idea is very advanced.

Since the fifth year of Hongwu, Lin Jingchun led the Ministry of Finance to directly upgrade the imperial court's white slips to the Daming Baochao, and then link the Daming Baochao, staple food and salt, two necessities for maintaining life, and simply withdraw copper coins from the circulation field to solve the huge problems that plague finances.

People cannot leave staple food and salt, and they must purchase staple food and salt in the Ming Dynasty. No matter who it is, they can only use the Daming Baochao and only recognize the Daming Baochao.

The court always controlled sufficient storage of staple food and salt, and controlled the production of staple food and salt to a considerable extent, so as to ensure that the value of the Daming Baochao was always strong.

State-owned farms and state-owned salt farms should be established on a large scale to maintain good operation, and should be fully controlled in the hands of the court and not shaken.

The Ministry of Finance will set up a special and rigorous plan to strictly control the issuance of Daming Baochao, the production and sales of staple food and salt.

The Ming Baochao is grain and salt, so it has a strong value. The court can safely issue a certain amount of Daming Baochao and set a strict banknote rotation period.

There are precedents in this regard that some practices of the Southern Song Dynasty court can be adopted.

After this suggestion was put forward, some people expressed their support, believing that this is the most feasible strategy under the current state.

Because everyone knows the meaning of staple food and salt, and those who recognize words but not, this is OK and can solve the current economic dependence on copper coins and iron coins.

But some people have suggested that this is not possible.

It is true that everyone needs food and salt, and it is a good anchor of value. However, it is not easy to store these two things for a long time. They may be corrupt and damp due to various problems at any time, and the storage cost is extremely high.

Moreover, the total storage volume is difficult to stabilize. If there are any dilemmas, the court needs to open warehouses and release grain to provide relief to the victims on a large scale, or if there are any huge military operations, it is inevitable that the Ministry of Finance will not use the storage.

At that time, it will be difficult to ensure the total storage of grain and salt and will face great challenges. This may affect the value of Daming Baochao to a considerable extent and cause market panic.

In this way, the value of Daming Baochao will face frequent fluctuations.

Especially in years when famines occur frequently and military use is frequent, it is particularly unfavorable to the long-term stability of the court.

Your Daming Baochao is ultimately just a piece of paper. Even if it is a relatively high-value water-textured paper, it is just the price of a piece of water-textured paper. Not everyone recognizes it. If you lose salt and staple food, what is the meaning of this piece of paper?
Chapter completed!