I've read about how it stabilized Taiwan's currency and helped prop up the economy, but how large are we talking about? Just tens of millions of dollars, or actually, billions or even hundreds of billions (in the equivalent of today's money?)

The Kuomintang took the entire gold reserve of China to Taiwan in 1949. It was in fact 1,998,000 Metric tons.
Read this from the Kyoto Economic Review:
--------
When Kuomintang (KMT) government decided to undertake the currency conversion on June 15, 1949, it was unaided. The inflation was so severe that the KMT government must have used all the resources to finish the inflation immediately and to restore the public confidence in new currency as well as in the government itself. Under such circumstances, the KMT government established a full gold standard based on the gold reserve which the KMT government brought from mainland China in 1949.
[..]
From the middle of 1949 to the end of 1950 the amount of gold releasing from the KMT government was 1,998,000 Metric ton (one metric ton is 32150 troy oz)

Shih-hui Li; “The Currency Conversion in Postwar Taiwan: Gold Standard from 1949 to 1950”, The Kyoto Economic Review, Vol. 74, pp.191-203 (2005).

1 metric tonne = 32,150.746 ounces

gold price is about $600/ounce

so let's do some math

$600/ounce X 32,151ounce/metric ton X 1,998,000metric tons=38,542,618,800,000=$ 38 Trillion USD.

No Wonder China is dirt poor after the War, them damn bastard sucked the whole body dry!

You got to make the calculations using the value of gold then. But if you got to take into account the time value of money, the figure is going to be huge regardless.

^LOL, 2 million tons can not possibly be right. Chop of 4 or even 5 zeros---> possible.

Is it even possible to transport 2 million metric tons of gold?

can you come up with a real source? because otherwise we would be talking about space cows on the rings of saturn holding chinas 5billion tonne gold reserves.

what? you don't how to fu-kin read. I gave you the article, date and page number already.
Shih-hui Li; “The Currency Conversion in Postwar Taiwan: Gold Standard from 1949 to 1950”, The Kyoto Economic Review, Vol. 74, pp.191-203 (2005).



The Kuomintang took the entire gold reserve of China to Taiwan in 1949. It was in fact 1,998,000 Metric tons.
Read this from the Kyoto Economic Review:
--------
When Kuomintang (KMT) government decided to undertake the currency conversion on June 15, 1949, it was unaided. The inflation was so severe that the KMT government must have used all the resources to finish the inflation immediately and to restore the public confidence in new currency as well as in the government itself. Under such circumstances, the KMT government established a full gold standard based on the gold reserve which the KMT government brought from mainland China in 1949.
[..]
From the middle of 1949 to the end of 1950 the amount of gold releasing from the KMT government was 1,998,000 Metric ton (one metric ton is 32150 troy oz)

Shih-hui Li; “The Currency Conversion in Postwar Taiwan: Gold Standard from 1949 to 1950”, The Kyoto Economic Review, Vol. 74, pp.191-203 (2005).

Holy $hit that's a lot of money

No wonder Taiwan developed faster than Mainland...

38 trillion usd for a small island??

I still don't see a source. A graduates paper is not a source. I want to see real sources. 38 trillion dollars converted into current currency is completely and utter rubbish.

The bloke even stated on page 202 "To testify the authenticity of of these data revealed by CCP other materials are still required

I could write a better paper than this guy to be honest. Its similar to people writing papers about HAARP weapons and 72 virgins. You have to check your sources kid by first checking the authenticity of the author and then their sources. You have much to learn little nationalist.

To give you an idea of how large was the stolen gold of China. Here's the top 20 gold reserve. You can see Taiwan is holding 13th place with half of PRC's holding. How can a tiny island with no resources have that many gold already can tell you the scale of the greed and corrupt of Chiang Khai Shek. And that gold is not including the sold and hidden ones held by the Chiang's family and his mafia friends. One can imagine how much gold was sold to save the Taiwan's dollar currency and to kick-start their economy back in 1960s, with so many reserve still left-over.

World official gold holding (December 2010)[10]


Rank Country Gold(tonnes) % of forex
- Euro Area 10,792.6 60.7%
1 United States 8,133.5 73.9%
2 Germany 3,401.8 70.3%
3 IMF 2,846.7 -
4 Italy 2,451.8 68.6%
5 France 2,435.4 67.2%
6 China 1,054.1 1.7%
7 Switzerland 1,040.1 16.4%
8 Russia 775.2 6.7%
9 Japan 765.2 3.0%
10 Netherlands 612.5 57.5%
11 India 557.7 8.1%
12 ECB 501.4 27.9%
13 Taiwan 423.6 4.6%
14 Portugal 382.5 81.1%
15 Venezuela 363.9 52.4%
16 Saudi Arabia 322.9 3.0%
17 United Kingdom 310.3 16.8%
18 Lebanon 286.8 27.6%
19 Spain 281.6 38.6%
20 Austria 280.0 56.2%