1 New Dollar Chiang Kai-shek

This issue belongs to the post-retreat coinage of the Republic of China government on Taiwan, which relocated to the island in 1949 following the Communist victory on the mainland. The Central Bank of China — pointedly retaining that name rather than adopting any Taiwan-specific identity — continued issuing coinage under the fiction of a government-in-exile with legitimate claim to all of China, a political posture that shaped every institutional decision through the 1960s and beyond.

The copper-nickel composition adopted for this series replaced earlier silver-bearing alloys as Taiwan's postwar economy stabilized under U.S. aid programs.