In early 1949, with the gradual defeat of the Nationalist army on the battlefield of liberation, Chiang Kai-shek had to consider the question of where to go next. In addition to the shipment of important cultural relics to Taiwan, gold is also the preferred target for shipment. For a long time, it has only been known that the Kuomintang transported a large amount of gold to Taiwan, and that it was carried away in secret, and the exact amount is unknown.
Beginning in August 1948, 2.6 million taels of gold from the National Treasury of the Nationalist Government was secretly transferred from Shanghai to Taipei, the first assets to be shipped away. At the same time, Chiang Kai-shek also made a decision to withdraw the remaining gold in the national treasury, the main part of the reserve for the "national currency" gold yuan coupon.
In order to transport this wealth to Taiwan, Chiang Kai-shek asked Yu Hongjun, a close confidant of Chiang Kai-shek, who had been mayor of Shanghai, minister of finance, and president of the central bank, to find a way to secretly send the gold in the national treasury to Taiwan. Since then, the Kuomintang authorities have transported the gold to Taiwan on several occasions by steamship and plane.
A few miles away from the Presidential Palace in Nanjing, the Chaotian Palace, where 500,000 pieces of cultural relics from the Forbidden City were stored from all over the world. With little thought, he decided the fate of these relics: like gold, transporting Taiwan! The Communists strongly accused Chiang of "stealing the property of Chinese people," but for Chiang Kai-shek, the gold was a valuable "military asset" necessary for his comeback in Taiwan.