[7][8] The Jin system is mostly used in the traditional markets, and famous for measuring gold, silver and Chinese medicines.

[2][4] China has been using its weight measurement systems since the Zhou Dynasty, mostly with jin as the base unit.

In ancient China, there was an official post called "Sima" (司馬) in charge of the military affairs.

Because the management of military grain and fodder involved plenty of weighing, the units of jin, liang, qian, fen eit.

Starting from the late Qing Dynasty, jin was also written in English as catty or kan based on the sounds of Malay language.

[13] Before the Qing Dynasty, various regions and industries in China had their own weight standards for jin and liang.

On 16 February 1929, the Nationalist government adopted and promulgated The Weights and Measures Act[16] to adopt the metric system as the official standard and to limit the newer Chinese units of measurement to private sales and trade, effective on 1 January 1930.

The Japanese implemented the metric system, but Taiwan continued to use the old weights and measures.

Currently, Hong Kong law stipulates that one jin is equal to one hundredth of a dan or sixteen liangs, which is 0.60478982 kilograms.

Although it was usually taken as equivalent to 600 g,[33] as with red pepper and meats,[34][35] a separate pound of 400 g was used for fruits[34][35] and another of 375[32] or 200 g was used for vegetables.