Financial penalties in ancient China mainly took the forms of ransom and fines. Most previous studies of ancient China’s financial penalties proceeded under the viewpoint of legal or political history based on dynastic chronology. However, some important assertions made in these studies have already been refuted by recently excavated materials. Adding to this, the period from pre-Qin time to early Han, during which the forms of financial penalty changed frequently, has not been understood as a whole. This article tries to approach the same topic through economic history, to reveal the state’s intention behind the transitions of the forms of financial penalty against the background of metal coins’ issuance. The author’s conclusion is: since financial penalties were connected to the state’s finance for the first time in the Eastern Zhou, their value had been from the first a military one; meanwhile with the prevalence of coinage, the payments came to be made with copper coins. Observing the Qin’s financial penalties through the example of fines (zi) shows that they had mainly been applied to people with official duties; then the object was later extended to common people. As, since the time of King Zhaoxiang of Qin, the government put more value on labour provided by prisoners, the form of payment of financial penalty transited rapidly into corvée labour. In the beginning of the Han, taking the fall of the Qin as a lesson, there was no example of demanding labour for a crime, although the law had such a clause: which is to say that financial penalties began to return to the form of monetary payment. The development of type-A ransom was in line with such a return. Generally speaking, the above-mentioned transition was driven by the state’s financial demands, while influenced appreciably by the development of a monetary economy.