ABSTRACT
During the Cultural Revolution in the 1960s the history of the Ming dynasty was used as a weapon, to be thrown back and forth by the propagandists. The future emperor of the Ming dynasty, turned up as a novice in a Buddhist monastery performing menial work. Zhu Yuanzhang holdings in the Yangtze River region were secure enough for him to proclaim the Ming dynasty. The dynastic Ming built up by Zhu Yuanzhang had certain Utopian features. It seemed more like a huge village community rather than a nation. At the founding of the Ming, the only major dynasty in Chinese history that owed its origin to peasant rebellions, the adaptation of a primitive economic base as the national standard. In the end the Ming dynasty had not only to ignore its own order prohibiting its use in private transactions, but also to accept it as a standard in public finance.
