Keynote Speaker: Wan Ming
Discussants: Feng Yuejian, Guan Hanhui, Sheng Hong

In Ming dynasty, silver had become the main currency, playing an important role in people’s economic life. Through the research, Prof. Wan Ming has found out that the process of the silver currency then was full swing from the top to bottom, which a trend from bottom to top had been before. The turning point was not in the beginning of 1440’s, but after 1500’s. The process was mainly promoted by the people instead of the government. And the silver currency was the objective reflection on the economic development motivation, also the process for market growing. It led to the social change in the later Ming, becoming the key symbol from the ancient society to the modern one in China.

In the book The Silver Currency in Ming Dynasty and the Change in China and Other Countries, Prof. Wan had a research on the topic from both the government angle and the people angle. She thought, the silver currency was the Socio-economic process. It was a kind of chain reaction launched by the goods and motivated by the market, which was the social change process led by economic, political, social, ideological, cultural factors. This process pushed people to be more linked with the objective rather than human, promoting the link between China and the world.

What’s more, Prof. Wan had a research on tax reform in Ming as well. She pointed out that the silver currency was the prerequisite of the reform; it had become the cause of the rule called a whip. The silver currency had experienced three main developing steps, and finally went to the world when the nation and the society had been expanded, promoting the interaction among the nation, the society and the world.

So far, Prof. Wan Ming are doing some work on Wanli Accounting Record, using mathematical methods to analyze, with silver for the study variables in order to observe the situation of national financial currency in Ming Dynasty.

Aug. 28th, 2009