Handbook of Key Global Financial Markets, Institutions, and Infrastructure

Chapter 5

Chinese Finance, 1348–1700

R. von Glahn

University of California Los Angeles, Los Angeles, CA, USA

Outline

Public and Private Finance in China, 1000–1700

The Monetary System

Public Finance

Credit and Private Finance

Summary

Glossary

Further Readings

Public and Private Finance in China, 1000–1700

During the Song dynasty (960–1276), China experienced unprecedented economic prosperity. Rapid advances in agricultural productivity, technological innovation in metallurgy, textiles, shipbuilding, and other industries, urbanization, and a vast increase in the money supply – including the creation of the world’s first viable paper money – fostered both quantitative growth in production and the emergence of sophisticated market institutions. ...