The Yuan Shikai dollar (also known as the "fatman dollar" by collectors, from Chinese ), are silver coins featuring a portrait of the Chinese president and military leader Yuan Shikai, minted across the Republic of China to replace the previous imperial coinage and various foreign silver coins in circulation in China. Beginning in 1914, the coins remained in production till 1928, long after Yuan's death in 1916. Designed by Tianjin Mint engraver Luigi Giorgi, the coin features a profile bust of Yuan wearing a military uniform on the obverse, with a wreath of grain and the denomination of one yuan on the reverse.
The dollar coins were regularly produced by various mints across China from 1914 to 1928, with a total production run exceeding a billion coins. Until 1920, all coins were dated Republican Year 3 (1914CE) regardless of their actual year of production. Some mints produced coins featuring various new dates during the 1920s, but these only incidentally coincided with their production date, with certain dates being usable as mint marks.
After the 1926–1928 Northern Expedition, the incipient Nationalist government halted production of the coins in favor of the memento dollar. However, regional circulation and production of the coins continued, with poorer-quality examples produced in Gansu and Communist-held areas during the 1930s. Production was curtailed by the abandonment of the silver standard in 1935, but returned in response to hyperinflation during the Chinese Civil War, including a large run of coins at Canton in 1949. The People's Republic once again produced the coin in the mid-1950s for circulation in newly annexed Tibet and rural regions of southwestern China. In total, around 1.1billion Yuan Shikai dollars were produced between 1914 and 1954, not including local issues produced by warlords or revolutionaries.
Background and creation In response to the increasingly widespread circulation of foreign silver coins in imperial China during the 19th century, the domestic production of silver yuan coins, often referred to as dragon dollars, was authorized by Liangguang Viceroy Zhang Zhidong. They began to be made in Guangdong in 1889. These were the first machine-made silver coins minted on a mass scale in China, but failed to out-compete foreign silver. Economic policy was debated over the following decades: proponents argued between the silver and gold standards, and whether the currency should be based on the yuan or the tael weights. The national government officially adopted the silver yuan as the base unit of currency in 1910. New imperial silver dollars began to be produced the following year in limited quantities.
Following the 1911 Revolution and the collapse of the Qing dynasty, the yuan was reaffirmed as the base unit of currency by the Beiyang government in 1913. The central mint in Tianjin had been rendered inoperable during the revolution, limiting the republic's early currency to already existing stockpiles of dragon dollars and various provincial issues. By early 1914, the Ministry of Finance had reopened the central mint, and restarted production of coinage with the old dragon dollar design. Two silver dollar designs, featuring President Sun Yat-sen (the memento dollar) and Vice President Li Yuanhong, were created in 1912. These mainly served as commemorative coins with limited circulation.
In 1914, the Legal Tender Act () mandated the minting of domestic silver coinage in order to replace foreign coinage. Silver ingots, the Spanish dollar, and later its successor the Mexican peso had been used as the main forms of silver currency in the preceding century. Unlike prior Qing regulations, the new act stipulated that the national government had the sole right to produce coinage, and standardized its composition and weight.
Centralized production of a new silver dollar issue began by the end of 1914. It featured a portrait of the current president, Yuan Shikai, a former Qing general who served as the head of the Beiyang government. The coin remained in production after Yuan's tenure as the Hongxian Emperor in 1915–1916 and his death on 6 June 1916. Although Yuan was an unpopular figure after his death, the ubiquity and high quality of the coins allowed them to continue serving as the primary silver coinage.
Design and specifications
In 1914, Luigi Giorgi, the chief engraver of the Tianjin Mint, produced the first design for a dollar featuring Yuan Shikai. It was a commemorative, non-circulating silver dollar featuring a front-facing bust of the president wearing a military uniform and a plumed hat. Following this, Giorgi designed a pattern design for a standard-issue, depicting Yuan in half-profile without a hat. Both of these depictions were based on photographs of Yuan, as Giorgi had not seen him in person. Giorgi presented a pattern coin to Yuan, but Yuan regarded his depiction as inaccurate and unflattering. Giorgi received permission to produce another design of the coin.
The final design of the standard issue featured a profile view of Yuan Shikai facing left on the obverse (front). He is depicted wearing a military uniform and a crew cut, although some nonstandard dies depict him as bald. On the reverse (back), taken from the original pattern issue, the coin's value of one yuan () is written, surrounded by a wreath of grain—likely barley.
The coin is in diameter and thick with a milled edge. The coins' weights vary by several grains, leading to sources differing on their standard weight. Its official weight was 72 candareen, or 72% of the Kuping tael weight. The definition of the Kuping tael was inconsistent during the Qing Dynasty, but was standardized as in late 1914, leading to a weight for the coin equal to 414.45 grains (26.857 g). Currency laws under the Republic allowed for a 3 per mil (0.08 g) variation in weight, although in practice the coins' weight often fell outside of the legal range. Its fineness (proportion of pure silver) was initially intended as .90 (i.e. 90% silver). However, as the recoinage incorporated large amounts of provincially minted imperial silver dollars, often of lower quality and fineness, this was reduced to .89.
Other denominations
Smaller denominations using the same design were approved alongside the dollar, marked in units of jiao, equivalent to ten cents. There were fifty-cent (five jiao or half-dollar), twenty-cent (two jiao), and ten-cent (one jiao) pieces, all struck in smaller quantities than the dollar coins. These lower denomination coins feature an identical obverse design to the dollar, with their respective denominations inside the wreath on the reverse. They were struck at a lower fineness of .70. Production of these denominations was delayed until September 1916 to allow for the dollar to circulate as the primary unit of currency. Prior to this, provincial twenty-cent pieces produced at Canton and Mukden fulfilled demand for small change.
The 1914 coinage reform laws outlined the production of cupronickel five-cent coins consisting of 75% copper. Pattern coins were produced at the Tianjin mint that year using the same design. However, nickel coinage was considered untrustworthy among the general public, and these patterns never circulated. Other five-cent patterns of the Yuan Shikai design are attested in silver, copper, and pewter, likely as proof or assay pieces.
In 1919, finance minister Cao Rulin investigated the prospect of introducing a standardized gold currency. The Tianjin mint produced ten-dollar and twenty-dollar denominations of gold coins with a modified version of the Yuan Shikai design. The obverse of the coins features the portrait surrounded by an ornamental design, while the reverse features the legend and a Year 8 date. These were produced in relatively small numbers and never circulated. The program was discontinued, and they were instead acquired by collectors. Production history Production of the dollars began at the Tianjin Mint in December1914. The Nanjing Mint followed in January 1915, alongside the Canton Mint at some point in the same year. Wuchang began minting the coin in 1916, alongside a comparatively tiny run of coins at Mukden. The dates on the coinage, given in the Republic of China calendar, are inconsistent and rarely reflect the actual year the coin was minted. From 1914 to 1919, all coinage in the series was marked as Year 3 (1914). Mints began to strike coins with new dates in 1920 (Year 9), although differing mints marked them as Year 8, 9, or 10, and in the following years no mint consistently updated the date to match the year of production.
Dollars are attested with dates of Year 3, 8, 9, and 10. The twenty-cent pieces bear dates of Year 3, 5, and 9; while the ten-cent pieces bear dates of Year 3 and 5. All half-dollars are dated Year 3. While the Year 3 dollars read (), later issues of the dollar add the character (), with dates in the format (). By 1922, most mints producing the Yuan Shikai dollar were minting the coin with a different date. These were intended as a way to identify which mint made a given coin, functionally serving as mint marks. Missionary Mildred Cable reported that Yuan Shikai dollars circulated in Gansu in 1926, but only coins featuring Year 3 dates were accepted at full value, as coins with dates following Yuan's death were suspected to be counterfeit.
Chinese banks grew uncomfortable with the coinage by 1917, as dollars lying slightly outside the legally prescribed weight and fineness were entering circulation. This problem was limited to only one or two mints, but due to identical dies between the different mints, the problematic coinage could not be traced to a particular origin. Complaints were filed with the Ministry of Finance in October1917, but little was done to resolve the issue, as the Warlord Era and the steady loss of authority of the Beiyang Government led to less oversight over coinage.
In 1920, the Hangzhou Mint began producing the coin on behalf of the Bank of China and the Bank of Communications. In 1924, the Anqing mint in Anhui began issuing the coin (dated to Year 8) in small quantities. Anqing's production began to dramatically increase, making millions of significantly debased Year 8 coins struck at between .74 and .83 fineness. From December1924 to July1925, the mint reported making 1,217,000 Yuan Shikai dollars. After this, the mint stopped reporting its mintage figures to the national ministry. Due to the lack of reporting, the mint was closed in 1926.
The Mukden Mint struck the coin at a .73 fineness for a single day in June 1926, having previously halted the minting of the coin since its minor production run a decade prior. Reports attest that the mint struck the coin in 1927 and 1928, much of which was shipped out of Manchuria for use in Beijing. Production at Mukden likely returned at this time due to Fengtian clique warlord Zhang Zuolin's occupation of Beijing from 1926 to 1928. In February 1929, following the Northern Expedition and the Nationalist government's defeat of Zhang, the mint was ordered to switch production to the Nationalist government's restrikes of the 1912 Sun Yat-sen memento dollar.
A mint at Fuzhou, previously minting regional twenty-cent pieces, made large amounts of 10th-year Yuan Shikai dollars in 1924 or 1925. Little is known about the Fuzhou coins beyond that they were struck in substandard silver. The numismatist R. N. J. Wright estimated that the Anqing mint produced around 30million coins, and Fuzhou produced around 5million. He estimated that across China between 1915 and 1928, 620million Year 3 dollars, 42million Year 4 dollars, 28million Year 9 Dollars, and 318million Year 10 dollars were produced, totaling 1,008,000,000 coins.