Money, Images, and the State: The Taiwanization of the Republic of China, 1945–2000

Abstract

Images on money provide a widely circulated medium through which a state can make its values visible: the money circulated in postwar Taiwan displayed almost no Great ideology, even in the Chiang Kai-shek era (1946–1975). Chiang ordered the Bank of Taiwan to issue the Taiwan dollar in 1946 and the New Taiwan dollar in 1949, rather than having a Taiwan branch office of the Central Bank of China circulate the legal tender of the Republic of China (ROC). From 1961 on, a picture of the ROC presidential office building in Taipei appeared on notes. Images on money and related currency laws up to 2000 reveal the ROC's Taiwanization. At first, this process was heavily driven by the Japanese legacy and American influence; later, it was shaped more by Taiwan's democratization. Imperial China's culture was reinstated, and pre-1949 ROC symbols were reproduced; the unification of images on the ROC's Taiwan money diverges from the diversification of images on money in imperial China and the pre-1949 ROC.