Yuan and Gold: Old Enemies Should Finally Become Friends

We'll never know if there really were 200 chests of gold on the steamer Taiping, as depicted in John Woo's recent movie The Crossing, but we can verify that 1,317 cases of central bank records were sunk with the ship in 1949. These documents, including the Draft Agreement on Gold, were the only legal basis the government of the Republic of China had to move the former central bank's gold reserves to Taiwan so they could be used to "pre-pay military expenses."