China Daily Global Edition (USA)
The money trail
Exhibition displays how revolutionary times saw a global currency emerge from humble beginnings, Wang Kaihao reports.
Times of revolution can be, among other things, a license to print money. From such humble beginnings, the renminbi is growing to be a global currency. The country’s remarkable economic strength is worthy of celebration on the centennial of the founding of the Communist Party of China. Chinese money in all its forms — from digital to physical — is used every day, even taken for granted, but where exactly did it come from and how did its use evolve?
The answer awaits visitors to a new exhibition in Beijing. They may well be amazed by how the currency has vividly reflected the grand picture of a Party and a country’s destiny through its body of bank notes.
Witness: The Exhibition Celebrating the 100th Anniversary of the Founding of the Communist Party of China opened on Wednesday at Beijing Ancient Coins Museum, located in Deshengmen Archery Tower. It will run until December.
Over 500 bank notes and coins used throughout the past century, on loan from collectors nationwide, are gathered for the special exhibition that reviews the growth of the CPC from a different perspective.
Gu Ying, the exhibition’s curator, says that the currencies from the early revolutionary years of the CPC are among the most important highlights.
“The currencies record a time of toughness and glory,” she says. “They showed how our country’s financing sector led by the Party grew strong from almost nothing.”
In 1926, the earliest bank note of the CPC was issued via an agricultural bank in Central China’s Hunan province.
“During those years, farmers, a pillar of society that supported the revolution, needed money to increase their produce, and many banks mushroomed to offer them loans,” Gu explains. “Hunan and Hubei provinces saw the founding of numerous agricultural banks then, because these places were hubs for the Chinese peasant movement at that time.”
From 1926 until the founding of the People’s Republic of China in 1949, 514 types of currencies were issued by 404 agencies in the Party-led revolutionary areas nationwide, according to Gu.
Though silver and copper coins, as well as paper money and other common varieties of currency, were seen during those years, some materials were unconventional.
During a difficult period being blockaded by enemies, cloth, for example, was widely used to make bank notes in the revolutionary areas, as some exhibits show. They were sometimes actually sewn on clothes to be more convenient.
“And this ‘cloth money’ with revolutionary slogans often gave publicity to revolutionary thoughts among the public, like pamphlets,” Gu says.
But even when coinage had to be made, the insufficient minting facilities during the early years of the Party meant the revolutionaries had to think of alternatives.
In 1928, the CPC-led Red Army established its first mint in the revolutionary hub of Jinggangshan, East China’s Jiangxi province. Mexican silver dollars were used as molds to make their currency. Since the late 19th century, that silver dollar had been commonly used in the Chinese market for the high value of its precious metal.
A Chinese character gong (meaning “workers”, short for “Chinese workers’ and peasants’ government”) was carved on the dollar to identify it as the currency of the revolutionary base.
Lack of precious metal caused a bottleneck in issuing money, and revolutionary bases did not have enough bank reserves, so people had to learn from ancient times and come up with creative ideas, Gu explains.
“They used important supplies from their daily lives as the reserve,” Gu says.
In Yan’an, Northwest China’s Shaanxi province, the center of the CPC from the late 1930s through the War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression (1931-45), a shop once became a major agency for the issue of currency.
Battles during wartime were not only about guns and bullets. An invisible war was also raging through bank notes.
After Wang Jingwei set up its Japansupported puppet government in Nanjing in 1940, a conspiracy was hatched to counterfeit the money from the revolutionary bases in large quantities, in a bid to destroy the financial system of the Party.
“To face the challenge, the anti-Japanese revolutionary base areas had to frequently change the design and colors of their currencies,” Gu says. “That also explains why such a varied array of currency was issued during those years.”
In 1947, the triumph of the People’s Liberation Army over the Kuomintang brought new problems for the Party’s financiers.
When the revolutionary base areas were blockaded and isolated, it was not such a big deal for each area to issue its own exclusive bank notes, but it was a different story when they were geographically connected to one another following their respective expansions.
One bank was merged into another, and the People’s Bank of China was finally founded in 1948, when the first series of renminbi was issued. This series includes 62 bank notes in 12 denominations. The biggest denomination was 50,000 yuan.
A whole series of this original edition of the renminbi is also on display at the exhibition, on loan from the People’s Bank of China.
Li Zhidong, an expert with the Beijing Numismatic Society, says that such an opportunity to juxtapose all 62 bank notes for one exhibition is rare.
“This series of renminbi includes many varieties and was used for a short period of time (until 1955),” Li explains. “So it’s a precious historical record that once played a key role in revitalizing the economy after a long period of war and helped New China to overcome difficulties.”
Key landmarks such as the Summer Palace and the Great Wall, as well as important infrastructure and scenes of industrial and agricultural production became the main themes appearing on bank notes.
Since then, renminbi, including various commemorative coins and bank notes, has become a way to mark the historic moments of the People’s Republic of China.
From the breakthrough in the space program, Hong Kong and Macao’s return to motherland, to the Beijing Olympic Games, one exciting moment after another has been marked on the exhibited currencies, enabling visitors to review the vigor of the Party and the country.
“While over time, bank notes and coins can physically erode, their historical value becomes higher,” Gu says.
The exhibition is open to the public from 9 am to 5 pm from Tuesday to Sunday. Due to COVID-19 prevention measures, only 300 people are allowed into the exhibition per day and reservations are required. They can be made one day in advance over the telephone on 0106201-8073.