网帖翻译

Brandon Scott Barney
China prevented the export of tea leaves to keep Westerners addicted to caffeine and keep silver extracted from everywhere coming from Ming to Qing and this imbalance led to evil people after they tried to trade technology for the tea they were addicted to but the Chinese love their caffeine profits until the British took the lesson and exported opium and there were American old money families in on the trade but the money the Wu Bingjian trader a hong merchant in the Thirteen Factories was actually re-invested in American railroads and major projects so the trade with west produced Asia’s first billionaire who made money on silver arbitrage and invested his money into America which accelerated America’s rise

中国曾通过限制茶叶出口，以此维持西方人对咖啡因的依赖，同时确保从明朝到清朝期间，全球各地的白银不断流入中国。这种贸易不平衡引致了一些不正当的行为，他们试图用他们所依赖的茶叶来交换技术，但中国人更偏爱从咖啡因贸易中获得的利润，直到英国人从中吸取教训，开始向中国出口鸦片。同时，一些美国的富有家族也参与了鸦片贸易。然而，伍秉鉴——广州十三行的商人，实际上将通过银子套利赚到的钱再投资到美国的铁路和其他重大项目上。这样，和西方的贸易间接催生了亚洲的第一位亿万富翁，他通过银子套利积累财富，并将其投资于美国，进而加速了美国的崛起。

Grain backed paper currency of the early Song similar to the Franc which collapsed after the Mississippi Company folded the Chinese paper currency went off the grain standard in the Mongol era which enabled the Treasure Ships which didn’t produce a sufficient return collapsing that dynasty

早期宋朝的粮食支撑的纸币体系与法国的法郎类似，都在密西西比公司倒闭后崩溃。中国的纸币在蒙古统治时期放弃了粮食本位，这使得宝船的航行未能带来足够的回报，最终导致了那个王朝的衰落。

Zheng He did end up having an unintended consequence whose impact would be global. At the time of the voyages, Chinese dynasties had been employing paper currency since the 11th century. During the time of Mongol rule the practice had been continued and the Ming Dynasty had initially followed suit as well. The earlier systems had backed paper currency with grain (meaning you could exchange, or “convert”, your paper for its value in grain), but during the Ming, money was not backed and was not convertible. The building and maintenance of the treasure fleet was a breaking point for the then unconvertible paper currency. To meet the costs of shipbuilding and supply the state printed far too much money leading it to tank in value.

郑和的航行最终产生了一个意想不到的后果，其影响是全球性的。在航行期间，中国的王朝自11世纪以来就开始使用纸币。在蒙古统治时期，这一做法得以延续，明朝最初也跟随其后。早期的纸币是以粮食作为支撑（这意味着你可以将纸币兑换成等值的粮食），但在明朝时期，货币没有支撑，也不可兑换。宝船舰队的建造和维护成为了当时不可兑换纸币制度的临界点。为了满足造船和供应的成本，国家印刷了过多的货币，导致其价值大幅下跌。

By the mid-15th century, just as the voyages were ending, increasing numbers of merchants were refusing to accept paper in return for their goods. In place of paper, a more informal system of barter emerged with sellers and buyers determining what constituted fair value. Localities tended to develop their own mediums of exchange so that in some places it could be bolts of silk, in others grain, and some areas even began minting their own copper or bronze coins. Without a clear long-term plan, the Ming began slowly and sporadically introducing a new system in which copper coins would be minted for everyday purchases while large purchases would be made with silver.

到了15世纪中叶，正值航海活动接近尾声时，越来越多的商人开始拒绝接受纸币作为商品交换的货币。取而代之的是，一个更加非正式的以物易物系统出现了，卖家和买家自行决定什么是公平的价值。各地开始发展自己的交换媒介，以至于在一些地方可能是丝绸，在其他地方可能是粮食，有些地区甚至开始铸造自己的铜币或青铜币。明朝没有明确的长期规划，开始逐步而零星地引入一种新体系，即铸造铜币用于日常交易，而大额交易则使用白银。

Along with this, emerged a new tax policy. Instead of taxing each local area in grain and labor, the Ming gradually began requesting tax payments in silver. This began as early as 1436 and then began more formalized over the next century and a half. By the second half of the 16th century, a new norm had emerged by which taxes were paid in silver which the state then used to pay for the costs of administering the empire.

与此同时，新的税收政策也随之出现。明朝不再以粮食和劳动力的形式对地方进行征税，而是逐步转向要求以白银来支付税款。这一变化始于1436年，之后的一百五十年里，这种税收方式逐渐变得正式化。到了16世纪下半叶，以白银缴税成为了新的常态，国家随后利用这些白银来支付管理帝国的费用。

One of the reasons that the system took so long to implement is because the supply of silver was not great enough to keep up with the huge demand that would come from requiring all 120 million subjects of the Ming to pay taxes in silver. This challenge was gradually resolved by enormous increases in the global silver supply. Japan was a major supplier for the first half of the 16th century, but it was mined in Spanish America which would become the key source of silver for the Ming economy by the end of the century. The huge demand for silver in China meant that its value was also extremely high there.

这个制度之所以实施得如此缓慢，一个原因是白银的供应量不足以满足明王朝要求其1.2亿臣民全部用白银纳税的巨大需求。这一难题随着全球白银供应量的激增而逐步得到缓解。16世纪上半叶，日本是主要的白银供应国，但到了世纪末，西班牙在美洲的银矿成为了明王朝经济中白银的关键来源。中国对白银的巨大需求也意味着白银在中国的价值极高。

From the late 16th century the exchange rate of gold to silver was between 1:5.5 to 1:7 while at the same time in Spain, the rate was 1:12 to 1:14. Because silver was twice as valuable in China it created a huge incentive for anyone who had silver to do their best to get it to China. Through most of the 17th century, 150 tons of silver a year passed from the Americas through Europe and into Asia. Maybe even more significantly, 128 tons a year crossed the Pacific from Acapulco to the Spanish colony of Manila in the Philippines (Figure 2.6.1) where Chinese merchants waited to exchange their silks and porcelains for American silver.

从16世纪末起，黄金与白银的兑换比率在中国是1:5.5到1:7，而同期在西班牙则是1:12到1:14。由于白银在中国的价值是西班牙的两倍，这为那些拥有白银的人提供了极大的动机，驱使他们尽可能地将白银运往中国。在17世纪的大部分时间里，每年有大约150吨白银从美洲经过欧洲流入亚洲。或许更值得注意的是，每年有约128吨白银横渡太平洋，从阿卡普尔科运抵西班牙在菲律宾的马尼拉殖民地，那里的中国商人翘首以待，准备用他们的丝绸和瓷器换取来自美洲的白银。

The Chinese economy had become like a vacuum cleaner sucking up huge quantities of the global silver supply. According to Flynn and Giraldez, the founding of Manila in 1571 marked the beginning of a truly global trading system. For the first time, all the major populated continents were lixed through “substantial, direct, and continuous trade.” (Flynn and Giraldez, 201)

中国经济就像一个吸尘器一样，吸纳了全球大量的白银供应。根据弗林和吉拉尔德斯的观点，1571年马尼拉的建立标志着一个真正全球性贸易体系的开端。这是第一次，所有主要的人口大陆通过“实质性的、直接的、持续的贸易”联系在了一起。（参考自弗林和吉拉尔德斯的著作，第201页）

It is worth remembering that within this new global trade, the most important components were Chinese demand and American supply. The high price of silver in China drove the Spanish to exploit their Andean and Mexican mines for all they were worth, to develop complex systems to provide those mines with labor, and to establish a colony in the Philippines nearly 9,000 miles away from its port in Acapulco to access the Chinese market. The result was that the Ming Dynasty got its silver and Spain, which was otherwise a relatively small underdeveloped kingdom, became for a time the great European world power.

值得记住的是，在这次全新的全球贸易格局中，中国的需求和美洲的供给是最关键的因素。由于中国银价高昂，西班牙人被驱使去全力开发他们在安第斯山脉和墨西哥的银矿，构建复杂的劳动力系统来支持这些矿场，并在距离阿卡普尔科港口近9000英里的菲律宾建立殖民地，以便进入中国市场。结果是，明朝获得了所需的白银，而西班牙这个原本规模较小、发展程度不高的国家，一度成为了欧洲的强大帝国。
原创翻译：龙腾网 https://www.ltaaa.cn 转载请注明出处

The flip side of this is that when the price of silver in China began to reach an equilibrium with the rest of the world, Spanish mining profits dried up, its ability to support its ambitions fell, and its status as a world power declined nearly as fast as it had risen. For its part, the Ming Dynasty also suffered as a result of fluctuations in silver prices. With silver losing about ⅔ of its value by the 1630’s it was as if Ming revenue had shrunk by a similar amount. This created a fiscal crisis that was ultimately one of the contributing causes of the fall of the Ming and the emergence of the Qing Dynasty after 1644. In this globalizing world, it was increasingly possible for conditions on one side of the world to dramatically impact people’s lives on the other.

这一现象的另一面是，当中国的银价开始与世界其他地区趋于平衡时，西班牙的采矿利润随之枯竭，其支持扩张的能力也随之下降，其作为世界强国的地位几乎以它崛起的速度一样迅速衰落。对于明朝来说，银价的波动也带来了灾难性的后果。到了1630年代，银的价值缩水了大约三分之二，这使得明朝的财政收入仿佛也减少了同等的数额。这种情况引发了一场财政危机，最终成为导致明朝灭亡和1644年清朝兴起的原因之一。在这个日益全球化的世界中，世界一端的状况越来越有可能对另一端人们的生活产生深远的影响。

The Qing dynasty suffered the famous humiliation in the 19th but blaming it on the west misunderstands current scholarship which is far more erudite and nuanced:

清朝在19世纪遭遇了众所周知的屈辱，但如果将责任完全推给西方，就忽视了学术界更为深入和细致的研究：

“…Economic depression in early nineteenth-century China was marked by a sustained decline in silver prices beginning in c. 1815. The Daoguang Depression coincided with an ecological crisis: climatic disturbances, harvest failures and catastrophic floods, particularly during the period 1815–1835. Conventional explanations for China’s economic troubles have emphasized either: (1) China’s incorporation into a capitalist world economy on unfavourable terms, resulting in a massive drain of silver abroad, primarily to pay for opium imports; or (2) a Malthusian crisis of subsistence triggered by unsustainable population increases that overtaxed the productive capacity of the Chinese economy . Yet neither of these theses is satisfactory.

“……19世纪初，中国经历了一场经济大萧条，其标志是自1815年左右开始的银价持续下跌。道光时期的经济萧条与一系列生态危机相伴而生：气候异常、农作物歉收和严重的洪水灾害，特别是在1815至1835年间。对于中国的经济困境，常见的解释包括：（1）中国在不利条件下被纳入资本主义世界体系，导致大量白银流向国外，主要是为了支付鸦片进口的费用；（2）由于人口增长过快，超出了中国经济的生产能力，引发了一场马尔萨斯式的生存危机。然而，这两种观点都不能令人完全满意。

In the first place, the onset of economic depression pre-dated the reversal in the flow of silver bullion. As Li Bozhong has observed, complaints of economic distress and widespread impoverishment of rich and poor alike were already being aired by 1820, well before the outflow of silver and bronze coin depreciation had become severe (Li 2007: 173–178). Moreover, any assessment of the impact of silver flows on the Chinese economy must consider questions of demand as well as supply. As Kishimoto Mio has shown, the penetration of foreign silver as shown by the adoption of the Carolus peso as a monetary standard varied extensively by region, and even by type of transaction (Kishimoto 2011: 13–17).

首先，经济萧条的开始早于白银流动方向的转变。正如李伯重所指出的，到1820年，人们已经开始抱怨经济不景气，富人和穷人普遍陷入贫困，早在银币和铜币外流之前，贬值就变得严重了（李伯重，2007年：173-178页）。此外，对白银流动对中国经济影响的任何评估，都必须考虑需求和供应问题。正如岸本美绪所揭示的，外国银币，特别是卡洛斯银元作为货币标准的普及程度，在不同地区之间存在显著差异，甚至在不同类型的交易中也有所不同（岸本美绪，2011年：13-17页）。

For example, in Jiangnan, the Carolus peso was widely used as the common currency of trade and finance by the beginning of the nineteenth century, yet land sale contracts continued to be denominated in bronze coin well into the nineteenth century. The complexity of China’s domestic monetary system at this time—which included Carolus pesos, copper and silver notes, and bronze coin as well as bullion silver—is still not sufficiently well understood. Given the present state of knowledge, we should beware any theories that treat the Chinese monetary system—or, for that matter, the Chinese economy —as an undifferentiated whole.

例如，到了19世纪初，江南地区已经普遍使用卡洛斯银币（西班牙银元或“双柱”银元）作为贸易和金融的通用货币，但土地销售合同直到19世纪仍然以铜钱为单位。当时中国国内货币体系的复杂性——包括卡洛斯银币、铜钱、银票以及铜币和银锭——至今尚未被充分理解。鉴于目前的认知水平，我们应避免接受任何将中国货币体系——或者更广泛地说，中国经济——视为一个单一、未分化整体的理论。

The new evidence for a Malthusian crisis from recent research—falling per capita GDP and real wages—is encumbered by methodological problems and questionable theoretical assumptions. The reversal of price trends in c. 1815—resulting in steep deflation in silver prices, but a steady level in relative prices—and the continuous population expansion down to the outbreak of the Taiping Rebellion belie a Malthusian narrative. Of course, given the massive scale of the Chinese Empire, regional variations were undoubtedly significant. The decline of cotton cloth manufacture in Jiangnan during the second quarter of the nineteenth century was related to structural and long-term conjunctural shifts in China’s domestic economy.

最近的研究为马尔萨斯危机提供了新的证据——人均国内生产总值和实际工资的下降——因方法论问题和有问题的理论假设而受到质疑。大约在1815年，价格趋势发生了逆转，这导致银价出现了剧烈的通货紧缩，但相对价格保持稳定，而且人口持续增长直至太平天国起义爆发，这些都与马尔萨斯理论的叙述不符。当然，考虑到中国帝国的庞大规模，地区差异无疑是非常重要的。19世纪中叶江南地区棉布制造业的衰退与中国经济内部结构性和长期周期性的转变有关。

The concentration of population growth in poorer regions in western China and the increasing rustification of handicraft production had adverse effects on urban manufacture in regions such as Jiangnan, which could no longer compete with cheaper cotton goods produced in the interior regions.

中国西部较贫困地区的人口增长集中，以及手工业生产的日益衰退，对江南等地区的城市制造业产生了负面影响，这些地区生产的棉产品无法与内地更廉价的棉产品相竞争。

The economic depression in early nineteenth-century China should be seen in the context of a long-standing pattern of conjunctural oscillation of economic expansion and contraction typical of advanced pre-modern economies. In the classic formulation of François Simiand, a long wave of economic expansion—the A-phase of population growth, expanding output and rising prices—was inevitably followed by an equally long B-phase of high mortality, deflation and stagnant output . Jack Goldstone has argued that the A-phase of commercial growth and economic prosperity that germinated across Eurasia in the early sixteenth century ultimately culminated in the economic distress, social conflicts and political crises that erupted in Ming China,

19世纪初中国的经济增长放缓应当被理解为一种长期存在的经济扩张与收缩周期性波动的延续，这种波动是典型的先进前现代经济体的特征。根据弗朗索瓦·西米安的经典理论，经济扩张的长波——即A阶段，表现为人口增长、产出增加和价格上涨——不可避免地会接着一个同样漫长的B阶段，这一阶段以高死亡率、通货紧缩和产出停滞为特征。杰克·戈德斯通提出，16世纪初在欧亚大陆萌芽的商业增长和经济繁荣的A阶段，最终导致了明朝中国出现的经济困境、社会冲突和政治危机。

Western Europe and the Ottoman Empire in the mid-seventeenth century. The subsequent B-phase of economic contraction lasted until the early eighteenth century before the Chinese and European economies regained momentum, inaugurating a new A-phase .

在17世纪中叶，西欧和奥斯曼帝国经历了经济收缩的B阶段，这一阶段一直持续到18世纪初。之后，中国和欧洲的经济才开始恢复增长，开启了新的经济扩张的A阶段。

In my view, although we can find some parallels in the cyclical trends of growth and decline in China and Europe in the period 1500–1800, there were crucial differences as well. 25 In the case of China, the long A-phase that lasted from the 1690s down to the 1790s did not end in a demographic collapse, but rather a precarious equilibrium .

在我看来，尽管在1500至1800年间中国和欧洲的增长与衰退周期趋势中存在某些相似之处，但也存在一些关键的不同点。在中国的例子中，从1690年代延续至1790年代的长期A阶段并没有导致人口崩溃，而是形成了一种微妙的平衡。

It is quite possible that eighteenth-century China experienced an ‘industrious revolution’ not unlike that hypothesized for contemporary Japan and Europe, in which population expansion was accompanied by the intensification of work and increased non-agricultural production in the countryside that, together with the development of horizontal exchange within local and regional markets, led to economic specialization and productivity gains equalling or exceeding demographic growth. 26 Despite the apparent synchronicity of the Daoguang Depression and the B-phase of deflation and economic contraction in Europe during the period 1817–1850, fundamental differences between the economies of China and Europe had emerged by this time. 27

非常有可能的是，18世纪的中国经历了一场“勤劳革命”，与当时日本和欧洲的情况颇为相似。在这场革命中，人口的增长伴随着劳动强度的提高和农村非农业产出的增加，这些变化与本地及区域市场内部的水平交换发展相结合，促进了经济的专业化和生产率的提升，使得经济增长与人口增长持平甚至超越了人口增长。尽管道光萧条与1817至1850年间欧洲的通货紧缩和经济衰退的B阶段在时间上似乎同步，但到那时，中国与欧洲的经济之间已经显现出根本的差异。

In addition, the role of silver imports in the Chinese economy had changed since the ‘Silver Century’ of 1550–1650. The primacy of silver—a cardinal feature of the A-phase of 1500–1650—became attenuated as bronze coin displaced silver bullion as the monetary standard in many local markets in the eighteenth century. Moreover, the economics of the silver trade had changed dramatically, as the arbitrage profits that orchestrated the global movements of silver during the ‘Silver Century’ vanished. Just as the causes of the Daoguang Depression are to be found in China’s domestic economic conditions rather than the global economy, the reduced demand for money (silver and bronze coin alike) during these decades was a symptom, not the cause, of this economic distress.”

此外，自1550至1650年的“白银世纪”以来，白银进口在中国经济增长中的作用已经发生了转变。白银的主导地位——作为1500至1650年A阶段的一个核心特征——随着铜钱在18世纪的许多地方市场取代白银成为货币标准而逐渐减弱。同时，白银交易的经济模式也发生了剧烈变化，因为在“白银世纪”期间推动全球白银流动的套利利润已经不复存在。正如道光萧条的根源在于中国国内的经济状况而非全球经济，这些年代里对货币（包括白银和铜钱）需求的减少实际上是这种经济困境的一个表现，而非其成因。