Great Qing Copper Coin

While the Guangxu Yuanbao were often provincially issued and at first were of different weights, the Great Qing Copper Coin was introduced by the imperial government in the hope of creating a unified national currency system.

[citation needed] From the year 1901, the provinces of Jiangsu, Hubei, Anhui, Zhejiang, Fengtian, Hunan, Beiyang Zhili, Sichuan, Jiangxi, Jilin, Shandong, Henan, Guangxi, and Yunnan had all begun to manufacture milled copper-alloy coins and distributed them nationwide.

[11] In the year 1906, the Ministry of Revenue had issued the "Regulations on the Rectification Law" (整頓圜法章程), and had merged 24 mints around China into only 9.

[14] Near the top of the rim of the coin on the obverse side, there was text written in Manchu (the language of the ruling class of the Qing dynasty)[14] that read ᠪᠠᡩᠠᠷᠠᠩᡤᠠᡩᠣᠷᠣ ᡳᠠᠨᡳᠶᠠᡳᠸᡝᡳᠯᡝᡥᡝ (and later ᡤᡝᡥᡠᠩᡤᡝᠶᠣᠰᠣ ᡳᠠᠨᡳᠶᠠᡳᠸᡝᡳᠯᡝᡥᡝ), meaning "minted during the Guangxu (or Xuantong) years", to indicate the era of mintage (during the reign of Guangxu Emperor or Xuantong Emperor).

[18] The reverse side of the Great Qing Copper Coin, like the Guangxu Yuanbao provincial coinages, also had the design of a Chinese dragon on it, but these dragons have much fewer variations in comparison to those on the Guangxu Yuanbao milled coins because of the imperial government's efforts in standardising designs.

[14] Near the upper part of the outer rim were the Traditional Chinese characters "光緒年造" (and later "宣統年造") written from right to left,[18][19] meaning "minted during the Guangxu (or Xuantong) years" (same as the meaning of the Manchu text inscribed near the upper part of the outer rim on the obverse side).

Not long after these new copper coins were introduced, black market counterfeit versions of the 10 wén appeared and illegal mints or "private mints" (局私) opened all over China and started producing more coins than what the Qing government's set quotas allowed on the market.

Joseon began minting modern-style machine-struck copper-alloy coins in 1892, which was 8 years before the Qing dynasty did so in China.