China and the Flow of Silver

Abstract

. -A Shanghai sycee (silver shoe. moreover, is a country where silver has long been the principal medium of exchange, a fact that has created some peculiar financial and commercial relationships between that country and the rest of the world. The Chinese monetary situation is closely related to conditions in the world silver market and to economic and political policies in other countries and hence is an important element in the present international .economic situation. For decades India was the center of interest in any discussion of silver. Until her mints were closed to free coinage in I893 she was economically the most important country on the silver standard; and until the middle of the I920'S she remained the world's greatest purchaser of silver, both for coinage and for hoarding. But China has become a factor of increasing significance in the world's silver market. She was for many years the only large country on the silver standard;' after 1927 she replaced India as the greatest purchaser of silver; and recently the stocks of silver in Shanghai have come to assume much importance in the silver market.2 China, despite the great use that she makes of silver, has few silver mines, and in recent decades her production has been but a fraction of one per cent of the world's total. Almost all of her hoards of silver have come in the last three centuries from the mines of the