Page 31 - Chinese SIlver By Adrien Von Ferscht

Towards the end of the Qing dynasty when the warlords were rife, local warlords used their
nearest provincial mint to issue their own ‘dragon money’ which simply added confusion to
an already chaotic coinage pot. As a result of the warlord connection of these coins, they
were often found to be far inferior in quality and content than any previously issued
coinage.

While there was obviously an overactive
ego at work that led to the minting of the
Zhou Xicheng ‘auto’ dollar coin and, indeed,
to the making of the highway it
commemorates, this silver dollar coin has a
unique hidden feature.

Concealed in the grass underneath the
image of the car is the signature of Zhou
Xicheng [right].

The last in the line of Chinese attempts at a
silver dollar was the Yuan Shih-kai dollar or
"Fatman" dollar, as it was more popularly
known. In a survey carried out by the
Shanghai Bank, of the 960 million silver
dollars known to be in circulation in 1924, 750 million were
Fatman dollars. The coin was in fact produced between 1914
and 1921 and had a purity of .890 silver and weighed 26.4gm.
In the first year it was struck, some 300,000 dollars were
minted every day at the Central Mint in Tianjin. These coins
can be identified by a distinctive ’T’ edge mill to the coin sides.

Whether the issue of Yuan Shih-kai dollar coins stabilised the monetary system in China is
debatable, but at the outbreak of World War I in 1914, the Mexican dollar was still
considered to be superior or more desirable to the Chinese counterpart. It should also be
taken into the context of 280 million ‘dragon’ dollars that were withdrawn and melted when
the ‘Fatman' was introduced. It is also known that although the date span of the Fatman
dollar was 1914-1921, a substantial amount of ‘copy’ coins were produced and circulated -
some of these coins were so low in silver content that it was possible to attract them with a
magnet. Many of these sub-standard coins were made and issued after 1921 and carried
spurious year dates. What is certain is that after the fall of the Qing dynasty and the
establishment of the republic period, the integrity of silver currency circulating in China had
begun to be compromised. When this happens, it is inevitably driven by a combination of
greed, a known lack of an assay system and a general lack of checks, balances and
written records. With Chinese Export Silver still in production at this time and knowing the
approximate timing of this breakdown in the integrity of silver coinage, one might be led to
question the accuracy of silver marks on silver items that purported to convey information
of the silver purity.