Occasionally, the whole system would break down, but then people would resort to their own expedients: “privately issued tea checks, noodle checks, bamboo tallies, wine tallies, etc.”56 Still, the Mongols, who ruled China from 1271 to 1368 AD, chose to maintain the system, and it was only abandoned in the seventeenth century. This is important to note because the conventional account tends to represent China’s experiment with paper money as a failure, even, for Metallists, proof that “fiat money,” backed only by state power, will always eventually collapse.
