An Economic Analyses on Wang Maoyin' s Theory of Monetary Reform in Modern China

Wang Maoyin, a modern monetary reformer of China, is the only Chinese who was cited in Marx's Capital. It was under such circumstances in which China was faced with internal strifes and foreign invasion that, he summarized and absorbed the experience and lesson from the paper currency that had been issued since Song Dynasty, put forward the advice of issuing insufficient exchangeable paper currency to alleviate the difficulty and pressure of finance of Qing Dynasty according to the current social maladies, and started the issuing system that the government combined correspondingly with banking house. He pushed the advancing process of reform to Chinese paper currency forward and represented the developing direction of modern China, monetary reform to a certain extent. Thus he attracted Marx' s attention. The progress of his thought is worthy of being examined. In terms of economics, the limitation of the thought of Wang Maoyin' s shady monetary reform is that he can not know the historical necessity and condition of the reality that paper currency totally replaces metal money. That is whether paper currency could make its currency status doesn’t lie in whether it's limited and exchangeable but lie in whether the government can guarantee the full play of the monetary function of the paper currency with the law. So long as the government can follow the circulation law of the currency, adjust and control the amount of paper currency to adapt to the currency quantity in circulation, the reality that paper currency totally replaces the position of metal money is totally feasible.