As Kitaoka Ryoko browsed through the information, the entire plan came to light.
It turns out that during the Japanese army's surprise attack on Guangzhou Bay, the Japanese navy captured a cargo ship that was being transported from the United States to Guangzhou while blockading the bay. At first, they thought it was just an ordinary cargo ship, but during the search, they found a large amount of Chinese currency with a face value of over one billion. In addition, they also found an original banknote printing machine with extremely high precision. This discovery made the Japanese feel like they had found a treasure.
In fact, decades ago, the Japanese repeatedly counterfeited and printed Chinese banknotes to disrupt the Chinese market and attempt to cripple China's financial system.
In the early 20th century, China's economy began to develop, and the old silver trading and circulation system became increasingly unsuitable for economic development. Successive governments attempted to replace the silver standard financial system with the issuance of paper money, but unfortunately, none of them achieved good results.
The most important reason is that the Chinese government's printing technology is backward and its anti-counterfeiting technology is almost non-existent. As soon as a new banknote is issued, counterfeit banknotes will inevitably appear on the market within a year or two. The consequence of this is that the banknotes will quickly depreciate and lose their circulation value, so they have to be abandoned. Every time banknotes are issued, they will cause violent shocks in the financial market and eventually be abandoned halfway.
The biggest culprit here is Japan. Their banknote-making technology is far superior to China's. Whenever China issues a new type of banknote, they can quickly counterfeit it and then put it into the Chinese market to damage China's economy.
The harmfulness of the Japanese counterfeiting currency is obvious. They used this method as an auxiliary means to invade and plunder the wealth of the Chinese people, and obtained incalculable huge profits.
The most famous example in modern times was more than 20 years ago, in 1911, after the liberation of Shanghai following the Xinhai Revolution. At that time, Chen Qimei, a pioneer of the Kuomintang and then the military governor of Shanghai, was in charge of the Shanghai military government.
The newly established military government faced serious economic problems, so it set up a joint-stock Chinese merchant bank, guaranteed and supervised by the military government, to issue short-term military banknotes to meet the immediate needs.
However, within a few months, counterfeit "military banknotes" appeared on the Shanghai market, causing panic in the financial sector. The credibility of the military banknotes quickly wavered and their value depreciated. Chen Qimei rigorously investigated the origin of the counterfeit military banknotes and eventually pointed the finger at the Japanese government. However, in the end, he could only recall all the military banknotes that the Huashang Bank had already issued and put into circulation, and stop their circulation. This effort once again failed.
It was precisely because of the repeated obstruction by the Japanese that China's economy developed slowly and continued to use a silver-based financial system until 1935, when the Nationalist government launched a currency reform and began to use legal tender, officially replacing silver in circulation.
This time, the Republic of China government learned from its mistakes. Since China's banknote printing technology was lagging behind, they simply commissioned the American Banknote Printing Company to print banknotes. Everything was done using advanced American technology. The American company provided all the high-end materials, including paper and ink. They completed most of the printing work in the United States and then shipped these semi-finished products to China to complete the final printing steps. After a whole set of complicated procedures, the legal tender was officially launched.
This set of legal tender already had watermarks and hidden marks, which was considered to be a highly advanced anti-counterfeiting technology for circulating banknotes at the time. Therefore, the legal tender issued by the Chinese government could even be exchanged for various foreign currencies at foreign banks and used to purchase various goods. It had a high level of credibility and its value was relatively stable.
After the legal tender was issued and put into circulation, the Japanese immediately began to develop counterfeit banknotes. Unfortunately, this time the progress was not smooth. The quality of the printed legal tender was far from ideal, and it was easy to identify the genuine from the counterfeit with just a little scrutiny.
This infuriated the Japanese, but this time in Guangzhou Bay, a large number of semi-finished legal tender and original printing presses were seized, which solved all these problems at once.
The paper used to print US currency is very difficult to counterfeit. The Japanese have not yet successfully replicated it. Now, they have suddenly obtained paper with a face value of one billion US dollars, as well as watermarks and security features that have already been printed. It can be said that by directly using these semi-finished US dollars, they only need to complete the last few steps to successfully manufacture a batch of US dollars. To some extent, this is indeed genuine US dollars, and it is impossible to verify its authenticity.
Currently, the Chinese government's legal tender is relatively strong. If the Japanese were to successfully print it, one can imagine the impact on China's monetary system if billions of yuan worth of legal tender were injected into the Chinese rear market, used in the Kuomintang-controlled areas to plunder strategic resources, and disrupt the circulation and credit of the legal tender. It would plunder a great deal of wealth from the Chinese people, severely damage and cripple China's economy, and cause extremely serious harm.
The semi-finished legal tender and printing presses seized this time will be directly transported to Shanghai, the stronghold of the Japanese and China's largest market for the circulation of goods and economy. After the printing is completed, this batch of legal tender will be directly put into the Shanghai market, so that it can spread to the whole country as quickly as possible and achieve the greatest effect. This is the whole content of the Eclipse Plan.
The Eclipse Plan was assigned to the Shanghai Special Higher Police. After reading the entire plan, Kitaoka Ryoko immediately understood how important this mission was, far surpassing all other missions.
She took a deep breath, bowed, and said, "Thank you for your trust, Section Chief. Please rest assured, I will do my best to complete this task!"
Taro Sagawa nodded and said, "You should be very clear about the importance of this mission. I believe in your abilities and value your loyalty even more. I hope you will complete this mission as soon as possible. All the resources you need will be provided first, and all actions must prioritize the Eclipse Plan!"
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