By using certificates, the government could avoid having to transport metal money far away. Each certificate had a certain amount of money stated on it and was redeemable for metal cash on demand in the Chinese capital. Most merchants never went through the trouble of going to the capital to get cash for their certificate, instead the certificates were used as money locally, since they were transfereable.
Real paper money was introduced early during the Song dynasty by a group of wealthy merchants and financiers in Szechuan. Notably, Szechuan was the province where Chinese printing first occured. The Szechuan paper banknotes quickly gained widespread acceptance and were widely circulated. Each banknote issued by the Szechuan group was printed with pictures of houses, trees and humans.
Even though counterfeiter of paper currency was punishable by death, there were few attempts. In , a printer, who had produced fake notes in 6 months was arrested and sentenced to death.
Soon after the Mongol took over China and established Yuan dynasty, it followed the example of its predecessors, Tang, Song and Chin, in using paper currency. The first paper currency issued in Yuan dynasty was in Various denominations were printed, ranging from a face value of two standard coins to the highest denomination of two strings.
Excessive printing year after year soon flooded the market with depreciated paper money until the face value of each certificate bore no relation whatsoever to its counterpart in silver.
In a series of new issues was put in circulation and the old issues were converted into the new ones at the ratio of five to one. The new issues were printed with copper plates instead of wood blocks, as had been the case before.
In another conversion became necessary. In fifty years from to Yuan's paper money was depreciated by percent. The earliest forerunner of today's banknotes was the "Flying Money" used by wealthy merchants and government officials in Tang Dynasty China AD — These were documents equivalent to present-day bank drafts which allowed an individual to deposit money with local officials in exchange for a paper receipt that could be redeemed for an equal sum of money somewhere else.
Flying money could not be exchanged between individuals, nor was it available to the general public. The first known examples of paper currency as we would understand it today were created in China during the Song Dynasty AD — Originally the government of the Tang dynasty was less than receptive to the idea of bills of exchange and had attempted banning them on multiple occasions, but in flying cash were officially accepted as a valid means of exchange.
The state began printing their own notes. Flying cash would remain in use until the early period of the Song dynasty. Between the years and the Chinese salt monopoly was controlled by local governments as opposed to the imperial government, this system was known as the Kaizhong policy , the local governments didn't produce the salt themselves but taxed it. In the year the government official Liu Yan had convinced the imperial government to actively enforce its salt monopoly again. This was known as the Zhece policy.
Under the Zhece policy Chinese merchants were paid in salt certificates for supplying the military of the Tang dynasty directly as opposed to merely transporting government provisions to them. During the reign of the Emperor Xianzong the supply of cash coins in circulation was scarce and when Chinese merchants would travel to the capital city, the merchants would entrust their money to the representative offices of their local governments, to the various armies of the Tang dynasty, government commissioners, and local rich families.
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