Page:Twentieth Century Impressions of Hongkong, Shanghai, and other Treaty Ports of China.djvu/297

Rh Maritime Customs, but it is a purely fictitious and non-existent currency. The practice is to pay all Customs obligations in local currency at a rate of conversion settled on the opening of each Customs office. Thus in Shanghai 111·40 Shanghai taels are usually taken as equal to 100 Haikwan taels, and a merchant would give his cheque in payment of Customs duties on that basis. In discharging its foreign obligations the Imperial Government reckons the equivalence of the several currencies as follows:—100 Haikwan (Customs) taels equal 101·642335 Kuping (Treasury) taels, equal 109·6 Shanghai taels. Although these and other rates of conversion are practically fixed, there is absolutely no fixed standard by which the exact value of any tael can be determined, for in some instances the fineness or quality of the silver is fictitious, and its acceptance is maintained only by the prestige of the large trade interests of the particular centre to which it applies.

The actual form in which silver passes from hand to hand is that known as sycee. Bullion is imported in the form of bar silver, and converted into oval ingots, called "shoes" on account of their resemblance to a Chinese shoe. These sycee ingots vary in weight from 49 to 54 taels, the average being about 50 taels; while for fractional currency obovoid lumps weighing two or three taels are employed. The shoes are stamped with the name of the melting station and of the workmen who made them, and their weight and fineness are determined with sufficient accuracy for all local purposes at weighing stations established by the Bankers' Guilds at the principal centres.

The question of currency has long engaged the attention of the Chinese Government, the principal foreign powers, and financiers and merchants having commercial relations with the Empire. Under the Mackay Treaty of 1902 China promised "to take the necessary steps to provide for a uniform national coinage which shall be legal tender in payment of all duties, taxes, and other obligations throughout the Empire by British as well as Chinese subjects."

The position at the present moment is admirably summarised in a paper contributed by Mr. H. B. Morse to the "Journal of the North China Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society." In this Mr. Morse says: "The currency in China is at the top a weight pure and simple, and at the bottom a coin which stands on its own feet, and neither receives support from, nor absolutely gives it to, any other unit in the series. At the top is the tael (call it the 'ounce,' and it will be better realised), in which payments are made in precisely the same way that delivery is taken of a lot of silver bars. Then comes the dollar, which, though a coin, is nowhere legal tender, and of which the specimens from the Chinese mints are inscribed, not generally 'dollar' or 'yuen,' but merely '72-hundredths of a tael.' Though so inscribed, dollars are nowhere fixed in terms of taels of silver, but are quoted at rates which vary from day to day according to the demand and supply, fluctuating within a range of 6 or more per cent. Then come subsidiary coins, fractional to the dollar, but subject to a fluctuating rate of exchange such that the dollar may this year change for 110 cents and next year for 95 cents in small coin. Next comes the copper cent, inscribed at the mints of some provinces as worth 'one-hundredth of a dollar,' and of others as worth 'ten cash,' but never treated as correlated to the dollar; whether considered in its relation to the dollar or to the cash, it is a token coin worth intrinsically less than half its nominal value. Last comes the copper cash, the currency of the people, with a present-day value of the ten-thousandth part of a pound sterling."