27th March.
Cuana CHIH-TUNG's Memorial in response to Professor Jenks' recommendations for a reform in the currency would be ludicrous were it not a pitiful exhibition of mean-ingles jealousy of advice coming from a foreign source. The Hukuang Viceroy was long regarded as one of China's most advanced statesmen, but his later publications show him to be as narrow-minded as is the ruck of high officials who now surround the Throne, and whose ignorant conceit has brought China to her present low estate amongst the nations of the world. We must not forget, however, that sweeping reforms in China, such as would be that of the currency, attack a swarm of vested interests and abuses, which in an ultra-conservative Empire are even more difficult to overcome and which fight harder for their lives than do the many abuses which impede reforms in the more progressive West. It is much the same with mining in China: the licensing of foreign companies who might render an accurate account of their output and pay honestly the stipulated royalties would interfere with the irregular gains of the innumerable petty officials who share in the profits of nominally illegal undertakings.) Mines are supposed to ba worked only under the control of the Provincial Treasurers and on Government account, but their net proceeds are invariably intercepted before they reach the provincial treasuries. Hence the Government of China, Government, derives no profit its practically inexhaustible dares not into: fore, from dread of fund of mineral wealth, yet seemingly
outcry which the attack on vested interests must inevitably raise., At the present moment we find a veritable rush among the various provincial vernments, each competing to take the lead in the wholesale tampering with the currency that is now going forward. The old-fashioned or sg cash with the square hole in the centre are bein rapidly melted down and supplant by the new ten-cash pieces which contain each the metal of four only of the: old cash. There is a ceaseless demand for coining machinery; some twenty new mints are at work and copper in daily increasing quantities is being imported from Jo: and the Pacific Coast of America. At the same time, the vast copper deposits of Yunnan and Szechuan, which are worked by special High Commissioners (Kuangwu Ta Chen) appointed from Peking, are practically unproductive, ie. as far as any appreciable result accrues to the central Government. The profits earned by the new mints are enormous: Chang Chih-tung's Wuchang mint is said to: have earned a net surplus last year of over two million taels; the daily outturn of the different' mints averages some two hundred piculs and this, estimating the gross consumption of twenty minis at 4,000 piculs of copper per diem, at a value of Tls. 34.50 per picul, shows a daily consumption of an amount of copper equal to Tls, 138,000 in silver. At least half this sum is profit; if we put this profit at T's. 60,000 per day and allow 300 days working in the year, this gives an annual gain to the provincial treasurers, after allowing for a legitimate amount of "squeeze," of no less a sum* than Tls. 18,000,000.
This profit to the provincial officials 1s, of course, equivalent to an indirect tax of like amount on the people. And in the beginning the people objected to take the new coin. Only last year a traveller along the Yangtze valley found the riverside towns refuse the new coinage, with a supply of which he had inadvertently furnished himself and which -he had to bring home unused. But now that the likin stations have been ordered to accept the new coin and that itis received by the tax collectors and by the cash-shops, the peels are learning to use it at its ace value as a substitute for the fast prose jon copper cash. But this irredeemable token money is made legal tender to an unlimited amount,—unlike the British token coinage, which is legal tender to the amount of £2 only. A time must come when the Government will discover that, by use of this coinage, the produce of taxation will have fallen off fifty.per cent and they will be compelled to double the taxes or put up with a reduced revenue. If the Government pursue the former they hare defrauded and the course, the pope will discover how discontent that H. E. Chang Chih-tung predicts in the event of Professor Jenks' tentatives towards the ultimate adoption of a gold standard being adopted, will be multiplied tenfold and a most serious condition of affairs must result. For the Government have to turn the produce of taxation into silver, and thence, in order to provide for their indemnity payments, into gold: as a consequence, they will probably insist upon their taxes being levied in copper cash or in silver, and then the fraud will be patent to all. As an experiment, it might be well for an importer to tender payment of duties to the Imperial Maritime Customs in the new copper coinage and so test the honesty of the officials. This new departure in coinage is indeed a most serious step: the prelude to the downfall of dynasties in China has invariably been a vain attempt to tamper with the currency.
Still more confusion has been introduced by the absence of any general standard by the various mints: some of the new ten-cash pieces represent a copper value of only three cash, others are brass pure and simple, not worth two cash. Each mint follows its own sweet will and a competition in debasement may ere long bring the value down to one cash. A universal, honest, and uniform coinage is thus farther off than ever;—one in which the minting profit on tokens should accrue to the whole Empire, with acknowledged and fixed limitations.
On the other hand, had Professor Jenks's plans been adopted, the saving to the Chinese Government would have been infinitely greater than the profit earned by means of spurious currency; the annual indemnity payment would be materially reduced and the commerce. the country placed upon a sound footing; the present exasperating fluctuations in the price of copper cash and in sterling exchange would cease, to the great benefit of the merchant, native and foreign alike. But the peculations of the officials and of the cash-shops would -be reduced, as well as possibly the "squeezes " of the foreign exchange banks, and so these vested interests are allowed to stand in the way of a reform of first necessity if: the Chinese Empire is ever to take her legitimate place amongst the nations of the world.
The Chinese officials, as we see by the air of crude suspicion that runs through the whole of Chang Chih-tung's Memorial, cannot yet be brought to comprehend that, -in advocating reforms, the foreigner is not impelled by some sinister motive and that he is not astutely hatching a prot, incomprehensible to the ignorant Chinese official, for the subversion of the Empire; whereas in reality his interest is at one with that of the people at large,—to see their wealth and prosperity increased, their trade placed on a firm basis, and so the facilities for intercourse increased on all sides and himself enriched as the nation increases in prosperity. Let us hope that the spread of education will in due time teach the officials of the Chang Chih-tung type that barter equally profits both sides: "It blesseth him that gives and him that takes," and that it is their interest to oil the wheels of trade; for the greater the smoothness, the larger are the transactions and the consequent benefit to the national prosperity and so to the national revenue,
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.