The main reason for a large amount of silver flowing into China

Main reasons: trade surplus and arbitrage.

In the Ming Dynasty and the early Qing Dynasty, China's economic strength was relatively large among countries in the world. At that time, China's agriculture and handicraft industry had reached a certain scale, but China people were still very closed at that time, and there was almost no ocean trade. However, marine trade in some western countries is very prosperous. They have a great demand for many products from China, and come to trade on their own initiative, which leads to an increase in China's trade surplus year by year, that is, silver flows into China.

In the late16th century and17th century, silver was exchanged for gold-transcontinental arbitrage. During the Ming and Qing Dynasties, with the development of trade, a large amount of silver flowed into China, while a large amount of gold flowed out, and gold was exchanged for silver, which is called arbitrage.

At that time, China had a sound industry, abundant commodities, self-sufficiency, and basically only one-way export, so there was a serious trade surplus and silver flowed into China. In order to change this situation, the West later imported a large amount of opium from China, gradually balancing China's surplus. However, in the later period, China imported more opium than it exported, resulting in a large outflow of silver from China.

Extended data

Precious paper money was introduced in the early Ming Dynasty, and gold and silver trading was prohibited. Silver is not legal tender. Since the end of 14, with the private use of silver and official taxation, silver coins have greatly expanded. At the end of 15, the monetization of silver expanded within the society, which led to the upsurge of overseas trade, further enlivened money and property, and aroused people's new and greater demand for silver currency.

During Jiajing period, silver has always occupied the position of the main currency in the field of social circulation. At this time, on the one hand, the state's fiscal revenue can't make ends meet, on the other hand, there is a demand for silver from the royal family to the ordinary people in society, and the increasing commercial behavior of the whole society just shows the large demand for silver for the national economy and people's livelihood.

/kloc-At the beginning of globalization in the 6th century, the huge demand generated by China society and the global interaction led to a large amount of silver flowing into China. However, it should not be forgotten that the process of silver monetization was accompanied by a century and a half of tax reform, which was the fundamental feature that distinguished the tax reform in the Ming Dynasty from the previous dynasties.

The core of Zhang's reform is financial reform. The reform of two important documents, Wanli Accounting Record and Qing Zhang Regulations, proves the trend that silver coins become the main body of the national financial system, shows the transformation of China's national financial system, which is mainly based on physical objects and labor, to a financial system based on silver coins in the past two thousand years, and marks the transformation of China from a traditional slave country to a modern tax country.

Baidu Encyclopedia-Ming and Qing Dynasties

People's Network-Why does Zhang have a lot of money?