In the late nineteenth century, as much of the world adopted some variant of the gold standard, China remained the most populous country still using silver. Yet China had no unified national currency; there was not one monetary standard but many. Silver coins circulated alongside chunks of silver and every transaction became an 'encounter of wits.' This book focuses on how officials, policy makers, bankers, merchants, academics, and journalists in China and around the world answered a simple question: how should China change its monetary system? Far from a narrow, technical issue, Chinese monetary reform is a dramatic story full of political revolutions, economic depressions, chance, and contingency.

Previously issued in print: 2020.

Introduction : Following the Money -- A Primer on the Qing Dynasty Monetary System -- Silver Begins Its Fall : The Global Circulations of the U.S. Trade Dollar, 1873-1887 -- Provincial Silver Coins and the Fragmenting Chinese Monetary System, 1887-1900 -- The Gold-Exchange Standard and Imperial Competition in China, 1901-1905 -- Money and Power on the World's Last "Silver Frontier" : The Currency Reform and Development Loan, 1910-1924 -- The Shanghai Mint and Establishing a Silver Standard in China, 1920-1933 -- The Fabi and the End of the Global Silver Era, 1933-1937.