This timely book traces the development of banking and paper money in republican Tianjin in order to explore the creation of social trust in financial institutions. Framing the study around Bian Baimei, a conscientious branch manager of the Bank of China, Brett Sheehan analyzes the actions of bankers, officials, and local elites as they tried to overcome political and financial crises and instill trust in the banking system.

After early failures in promoting trust, government authority as a regulator of the financial system gradually increased, peaking in 1935, when the state unified the money supply for the first time in several hundred years. Concurrently, when local elites proved unable to develop successful strategies to make people trust the system, their influence declined. The need for trust in increasingly complex financial arrangements redefined state-society relations, simultaneously enhancing state power and creating new constraints on the actions of both elites and governments.

Trust in Troubled Times is a valuable new perspective on the economic, social, and political history of modern China.

   Acknowledgments ix

   A Note on Currency Values xiii

   Introduction 1

1  Personal Networks and State Needs 19

2  The 1916 Moratorium on Exchange in Tianjin 45

3  Local Regulators, Paper Tigers, and Good Citizens 76

4  The Rules of the Game under Warlord Governments 100

5  Early Nationalist Rule and a New Environment 126

6  Trust at a Time of International Crisis 152

   Conclusion 177

   Appendixes
   A Currency Circulation of Tianjin's Modern Banks 189
   B English and Chinese Names of Banks 190
   C The Money Scare Vernacular Song 191
   D Tianjin Bank of China Loans to Governments, 1927  193

   Notes 195

   Glossary of Selected Chinese Terms 241

   Bibliography 245

   Index 265