Featured Article Summary #100

In 1914, silver coins showing Yuan Shikai’s portrait were made across the Republic of China to replace older imperial and foreign coins. The best-known coin, the Yuan Shikai dollar (nicknamed the “fatman dollar” by collectors), was designed by Tianjin Mint engraver Luigi Giorgi and shows Yuan in a military uniform on one side and a wreath with “one yuan” on the other. These dollar coins were minted by many different mints until 1928, with total production of more than a billion coins. Most coins were originally dated Republican Year 3 (1914), even if they were made later, and later dates in the 1920s mostly served as mint markers. After the Northern Expedition in 1926–1928, the Nationalist government stopped making them, but they continued to circulate and were still produced in some regions during later conflicts. Altogether, about 1.1 billion were made between 1914 and 1954, excluding similar local issues made by warlords or revolutionaries. As foreign silver coins became more common in China in the 19th century, Zhang Zhidong authorized China to produce its own silver yuan coins (dragon dollars), starting in Guangdong in 1889. Although these were among the first mass machine-made silver coins in China, they did not quickly replace foreign coins, and debates continued for decades over silver/gold standards and whether the currency should be based on yuan or tael weights, until the silver yuan was officially adopted in 1910 and production resumed in limited form after 1911. After the Qing dynasty fell, the Beiyang government confirmed the yuan in 1913, but early minting was limited because the Tianjin mint was damaged. Once the mint reopened and centralized coinage was required by the 1914 Legal Tender Act, new standardized coins were produced, including special commemoratives in 1912 and, from late 1914, regular silver dollars featuring President Yuan Shikai. Production continued even after Yuan became Hongxian Emperor and died in 1916, and the coins remained widely used due to their availability and quality. In 1914, Luigi Giorgi, the chief engraver at the Tianjin Mint, created the first Yuan Shikai dollar design based on photographs of Yuan. Yuan disliked Giorgi’s likeness, so Giorgi was allowed to produce a new standard design showing Yuan in profile facing left on the front, with “one yuan” and a grain wreath on the back. The coin measures 39 mm across and has a milled edge; its weight and silver purity varied, with the official target weight being 26.857 g and the intended fineness dropping from 0.90 to 0.89 as lower-quality silver from other sources was used. Smaller coins with the same overall design were approved alongside the dollar, including 50-cent, 20-cent, and 10-cent pieces. They used a lower fineness of .70 and were produced later in September 1916 so the dollar would circulate first; before that, provincial 20-cent coins from Canton and Mukden helped cover the need for small change. Laws from 1914 also called for cupronickel five-cent coins, and Tianjin made pattern versions of the same design, but people did not trust nickel, so the patterns were never used. In 1919, gold coin experiments were also made in small numbers (10- and 20-dollar pieces), then the plan was dropped and only collectors bought them. Yuan Shikai dollars were first minted in December 1914 at Tianjin, then in January 1915 at Nanjing, with Canton and later Wuchang and other mints following. However, the coin dates (in the Republic of China calendar) often did not match the real year of production, with many early issues repeatedly marked as “Year 3” until mints began changing dates in 1920, though they stayed inconsistent afterward. Different mints also made coins with varying quality, causing problems such as coins of slightly wrong weight and fineness entering circulation, and by the 1920s some mints issued debased coins or stopped reporting production; overall, estimates suggest billions of coins were struck across multiple years and denominations between 1915 and 1928.