The Wen Xing — "round coin with round hole" — belongs to a transitional period when Qin was systematically displacing the spade and knife money traditions of rival states, imposing monetary uniformity as a deliberate instrument of administrative control well before the final conquests. By the time Qin Shi Huang standardized the ban liang across the unified empire after 221 BC, the infrastructure for that reform had already been built on issues like this one.
The Wen Xing — "round coin with round hole" — belongs to a transitional period when Qin was systematically displacing the spade and knife money traditions of rival states, imposing monetary uniformity as a deliberate instrument of administrative control well before the final conquests. By the time Qin Shi Huang standardized the ban liang across the unified empire after 221 BC, the infrastructure for that reform had already been built on issues like this one.