Yu's ANALYSIS OF CURRENCY 883to match the emperor's own treasury, but he rebelled against the throne. Teng
T'ung spent forty years accumulating a greater fortune by mining and minting
more cash than what Emperor Wu (r. 140-87 B.C.) possessed when he came to
the throne. Although Teng did not rebel, he set a bad example for district mag-
istrates who sought to increase their depleted funds by establishing mints in the
mountains themselves. Since other private persons also engaged in counterfeit-
ing, the net increase in the money supply reduced the value of the coinage and
created commodity price inftation.9
Han Wu-ti and Uncontrolled Minting. The expansion of the money supply by
uncontrolled minting and counterfeiting reached a crisis point in the reign of
Emperor Wu, and in I 18 B.C. he adopted measures that appeared similar to Chia
l's proposal except that they were accompanied by the mailed fist of the state.
He minted the new five-shu coin that was more difficult to counterfeit because
it was heavier in weight than the current coin and had a rim around the edge and
a design on the face. As the conqueror of vast territories, however, he was unwill-
ing to leave the fate of the money supply to chance, so he prohibited private
minting, executed as many as twenty or thirty thousand counterfeiters unmer-
cifully, and terrorized hordes of small counterfeiters into confessing their crimes
in advance to obtain pardons. He created three officials under the office of the
Imperial Forest Park (Shang-lin-yuan) who controlled all the cash ofthe empire
and gave them the exclusive right to mint cash, and he ordered that all previous
coins be melted down. The cost of minting the new coin was so high relative to
the nominal value of the coin that none but a few skilled craftsmen could profit
from counterfeiting. As we will see, the elements of Emperor Wu's policy made
a lasting impression on Yu Hyongwon: the application of technological skill to
create well-made coins difficult to copy, severe punishment for counterfeiters
and private minters, and the minting of a coin that allowed no profit for coun-
terfeiters. 10 What Yu learned from the literature on the Han dynasty was. there-
fore, not that cash was an abomination that had better be abolished or that its
use created insoluble problems, but that the assertion of control by the mler backed
by coercion could bring all anomalies under control.
Copper Cash over Cloth and GrainCh 'iu Chiin and Kung Yu's Ohscurantism. On the other hand, despite Emperor
Wu's Draconian solution to the problems of monetary debasement, excessive
money supply and inflation continued past his death, and a new group of moral-
ists emerged who demanded the abolition of cash because it was the source of
immorality. To illustrate this view Yu cited the opinion of Kung Yu in the reign
of Emperor Yuan of the Han dynasty (r. 48-32 B.C.), who believed that cash
itself had stimulated peasants to abandon agriculture for the prospect of filling
their own private treasuries to the brim with their cash profits from commerce.
He proposed that the emperor outlaw cash as legal tender, abolish Emperor Wu's
agencies in charge of minting cash, and decree that cloth and grain would hence-