Monetary theory from a Chinese historical perspective  John
Whalley, Zheng Xueyi, Yaguang Zhang, 20 July 2010    The world
is still learning about the multifaceted marvel which is China.
China the rapidly growing giant (Mitchener and Yan 2010), China
the super saver (Wei 2010), China the super-competitive exporter
(Huang 2010), China the ancient culture, etc. One aspect that
has been little appreciated is China as a source of economic
theory.   In recent work we summarise pre-industrial revolution
thinking on money and monetary policy (Xueyi et al. 2010) – the
first in what we hope is a series papers on ancient Chinese
economic thought.   Money in China  The monetary structure of
the economies of ancient China varied across dynasties. In some
ways it was both more complex and less well-developed than
Europe’s.    • Three different forms of coinage typically
circulated (gold, silver, and copper).   • The invention of
paper money is usually credited to China, with its large scale
use arriving in the late 8th or