"To speak of loss from the influx of foreign dollars may appear paradoxical to those who have only eyes for the palpable loss to the country caused by the importation of foreign opium and manufactures and the purchase of foreign ships and cannon. Very little reflection, indeed, suffices to show the disastrous tendency of exchanging for a useless weed the bounteous produce of our harvests, of deluding with new-fangled inventions the practical minds of our people, of spending on a gun or a ship tens of thousands of taels. But I shall endeavour to show that the proposition is no paradox, and that the loss to China caused by the influx of foreign dollars is, if less visible on the surface, at bottom none the less real.
"During the reigns of Tao Kwang and Hien Fêng (1821-1862), to buy each of these dollars China parted with eighty-five tael cents; and as the real value was seventy-two tael cents, on every dollar which she purchased she lost thirteen tael cents. As, taking all the provinces together, she must have been purchasing at least forty or fifty million dollars every year, she must have been losing every year by exchange the enormous sum of four or five million taels.
"Times have changed; but vast numbers of dollars are yearly imported from various countries, most of them composed of one-tenth alloy; and, in payment of this silver blended with baser metal, our pure silver is shipped away in heaps. Moreover, dollars which are worth at most seventy-two or seventy-three tael cents are sold in market at one, two, three, or four tael cents more than that. Such a drain will end in exhausting our silver supply, even if we had mountains of it, if not checked betimes.
"We cannot prevent the importation of foreign dollars, nor prohibit their use by the people; for the people wish for them, although they are depleting the country of its wealth. There appears to me only one way of checking this depletion, and that is by China coining dollars herself.
"Opponents will say, even if China coin them, they will not circulate. They will point to two previous instances where such an attempt was made and failed. The first was towards the end of the reign of Tao Kwang (about 1850): two officials obtained permission from the Governor of Chekiang to start a silver-mint, and everybody looked at the coins, rung them, and declined to have anything to do with them. The second experiment was made at Wusih by Mr. Lu Sueh-tsun: he turned out dollars which compared favourably with foreign dollars in every particular except one—namely, that nobody would use them. The opponents of the measure point to these two examples, and say the coinage of dollars in China will never succeed.
"Some of these opponents do not go so far, but merely say that, even if the Chinese Government is able to put home-made dollars into circulation, it can only be in the southern and eastern provinces, as in the north and west the people, accustomed to sycee and paper money, would shrink from the manifold inconveniences involved in a sudden change to a dollar medium of exchange.
"This appears to me more the language of narrow-minded pedants than of practical men of the world. Which one of all who stand under China's sky and feed off China's fields but desires his country's exaltation and the depression of foreigners? If to-day all love foreign money, it is because there is as yet no Chinese money. Once let there be Chinese money, and we shall see how many will leave it for foreign. The two instances alleged above only show that the coins which people looked at, rung, and rejected were false in look and false in ring. The semi-private way in which they were coined in a village was in itself enough to excite the suspicions of the great mass of the public. An Imperial Mint, openly conducted and turning out good work, would arouse no such suspicions; and its money would very soon be current, not only in the provinces of the south and east, but also in those of the north and west, for the following reasons:
"The travelling merchant and trader of the north and west has now to carry with him both silver sycee and copper cash. Copper cash is heavy, and it is impossible to carry much value in that form; whilst the carrying about of silver entails many and grievous losses in exchange. It is natural to suppose that he would welcome as the greatest boon a gold and silver currency which, by its portability and uniformity of value, would relieve him of the obstacles which the present system in vogue in the north and west spreads in the path of commerce.
"The opponents of an Imperial Chinese Mint for the precious metals commonly adduce four dangers, the contemplation of which, they say, should make China hesitate to incur them. Let us look them in the face. They are, firstly, the facility of counterfeiting the new coinage; secondly, the difficulty of coinage, if commenced; thirdly, the loss to China's prestige by an imitation of foreign manufactures; fourthly, the possible venality of officials and workmen in the Mint.
"Would it not be the depth of pusillanimity, the extreme of unreasonableness, for our great nation to give up, for fear of dangers such as these, a plan which, carried out under the guidance and control of well-selected men, will admittedly dam the outflow of our wealth, and put an end to our impoverishment, which is now going on year after year for the benefit of foreigners?