A Study On The Interest Rate Of Ancient Chinese Private Lending

Private lending is an important economic activity in ancient China,involving farmers,businessmen,landlords,bureaucrats,scholars,nobles and even the royal family and other social strata,in ancient Chinese society and lice plays a pivotal role.Chinese ancient rulers have long adopted the statutory interest rate method to regulate the private lending rate,and restrict the usury activities.However,the actual social lending activities did not strictly abide by the statutory interest rate.Ancient Chinese private lending is manifested in folk and non-official nature,and both lenders and borrowers include natural persons and structures besides modern enterprise organizations.Lenders are mostly economic wealth,political status and other advantages of social groups,borrowers are involved in all sectors of society.With the borrowing subject as the standard,taking into account the main body of borrowing and the way of guarantee,the ancient Chinese private lending can be divided into three categories: monetary loan,pledge loan and grain loan.With the change of dynastic and the evolution of the times,the ancient Chinese private lending including the legal interest rate and the real interest rate,has different appearance and characteristic in different dynasties.However,throughout the evolution of ancient Chinese private lending,the rate still has some regularity and characteristics,that is,the dual structure of the legal interest rate and the real interest rate;the high interest rate is still repeated,the legal regulation fails;the overall interest rate decline and tends to smooth.The evolution characteristics of the ancient Chinese private lending rate include many causes.China's ancient dominated small peasant economy,as well as the centralized feudal system caused by the rich and the poor differentiation,fundamentally produced private lending and usury.In addition,the wealthy exploits,officials ignore the ban,the official indulges,and the government financial system can't meet the needs of the people,are the forces of usury.Although ancient China has a statutory interest rate to limit the usury,but under the Chinese feudal ritual culture,the law is only a tool to maintain the ceremony,supplement and description to the criminal law,can't form an effective regulation of private lending.Of course,we must see that with the development of commodity currency economy,and the change of government contract and interest rate regulation,under the influence of interest rate competition of professional lending institutions,the interest rate of Chinese ancient private lending declined.In view of the problems of contemporary private lending,in view of the evolution of the ancient Chinese private lending rate,we still need to adhere to the legal means and methods,enrich the legal system of civil lending,and improve the private financing channels.