New Taiwan dollar - Taiwan

March 8, 2014


		1 Introduction 2 History of Taiwanese currency 3 Current Currency 4 See also 5 External links

China Taiwan

New Taiwan dollar

Wikipedia

The New Taiwan Dollar (新臺幣 or 新台幣; ISO 4217 code TWD; old abbreviation NT$) or simply Taiwan Dollar is the common currency|currency of the Republic of China (on Taiwan). It was issued by the Bank of Taiwan. Starting from July 3 2001, Central Bank of China took over the issuing responsibility.
Image:TaiwanP1995-2000Yuan-2001(2002)_a.jpg|thumb|2000 TWD issued in 2002
Image:Taiwan_100_nt.jpg|thumb|100 TWD issued by Bank of Taiwan
Image:Rmb1.jpg|thumb|The head and tail of 1 yuan, issued 1981
The Denomination (currency)|denominations of TWD in circulation are

Coins

* 0.5 TWD (rare)

* 1 TWD

* 5 TWD

* 10 TWD

* 20 TWD (rare)

* 50 TWD

Banknotes

* 100 TWD

* 200 TWD

* 500 TWD

* 1000 TWD

* 2000 TWD

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History of Taiwanese currency

Image:Taiwan-1M-Yuan-(1948).jpg|thumb|150px|Severe inflation caused by corruption in the early ROC administration forced authorities to issue currency with denominations of one million dollars in 1948.
Major Chinese settlement of Taiwan did not begin until the 1600s and the island was dominated by the Taiwanese aborigine. In between 1624 and 1662, Taiwan was colonized by the Dutch East India Company. No much was known about the currency used by then. Taiwan was first annexed by Qing Dynasty in 1683 as a perfecture of Fukien (Fujian) province. Chinese Taels (CNT) was used when Taiwan was part of Chinese Empire, until 1895 when Taiwan was ceded to Japan in the Treaty of Shimonoseki. The Japanese issued Taiwan Yen banknotes (TWY) through Bank of Taiwan, which was established in 1889, at par with the Japanese Yen when they took over the island. The Yen was divisible into 100 Sen.

In 1946, a few month after the surrender of Taiwan from Japan to ROC government, which was acting on the behalf of the Allied Powers, ROC government took over the Bank of Taiwan and issued Taiwan Dollars (also known as Taiwan Nationalist Yuan (TWN)), replacing the Japanese Taiwan Yen at an exchange rate of one to one ration. The new banknotes were printed in New York at the Government's order, and were shipped to Taipei by way of Shanghai. Taiwan Nationalist Yuan (TWN) became the unit of account, and was an independent currency from the Chinese Nationalist Yuan. The Taiwanese Dollar acted as a separate currency from the Nationalist Yuan since the Taiwanese Dollar, which had been tied to the yen, had depreciated at a slower rate than the Nationalist Yuan.

However, due to the corruption of the ROC Governor-General of Taiwan, Chen Yi (Kuomintang) and the 228 Incident, severe inflation occurred in Taiwan. There were also accounts that Bank of Taiwan under ROC administration did not actually have records of the total issue, and that there was much extra-legal printing.http://www.romanization.com/books/formosabetrayed/chap06.html ROC government went on issuing banknotes at higher denominations upto banknotes with values of one million dollars to handle the inflation on the island.

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Current Currency

The New Taiwan Dollar was first issued in June 15, 1949, few months before the ROC government retreated to Taiwan, to replace the (old) Taiwan Nationalist Yuan at a 40,000:1 ratio. The first goal of the New Taiwan Dollar was to end the hyperinflation which had plagued Taiwan island and also ROC in its final years on Mainland China.

In Law_of_China#Law_in_the_Republic_of_China|ROC law, the old fiat currency (法幣) or silver yuan (銀元; aka Chinese Nationalist Yuan, de-coupled from the metal during World War II by Chiang Kai-shek's administration) has been used in older statutes; many amounts for fines and fees in the ROC criminal laws are denominated in this unit. According to the Act of exchange rate between New Taiwan Dollars and the fiat currency in the ROC laws (現行法規所定貨幣單位折算新台幣條例), the exchange rate has been fixed at 3 TWD per 1 silver yuan and has never been changed despite decades of inflation. Starting from 2001 Jan, banknotes of New Taiwan Dollar are issued by the Central Bank of China, the central bank of the ROC. Since then, New Taiwan Dollar has become legally the fiat currency in Taiwan and was no longer regarded as equal as the fiat currency any more.

In the history of the currency the exchange rate as compared to the United States Dollar (USD) has varied from over 40 TWD per 1 USD in the 1960s to about 25 TWD per 1 USD around 1992. The exchange rate has been around 33 TWD per 1 USD in recent few years.

In Mandarin (linguistics)|Mandarin, the basic unit of the Taiwan Dollar is called a yuan (圓 lit. round, simplified to 元); colloquially, it is called kuài (塊 lit. piece). Subdivisions of a yuan are rarely used, since practically all products on the consumer market are being sold at whole units of yuan. In Taiwanese (linguistics)|Taiwanese, the unit is called kho·.

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