The most interesting of these bargains to the foreigner is presumably the Shanghai Mint loan. The amount is $2,500,000. The Government gives as security Treasury notes guaranteed surplus from the Customs, the Salt Revenue, the Wine and Tobacco Tax and railway earnings. The interest is 9 per cent. and the Treasury notes sell at 93. The Salt Administration will pay from surplus $70,000 a month from April, 1921, to May, 1994, towards redemption. So much has been made public by the bankers together with other details.
The object of the transaction is to establish an independent mint which will coin a standard dollar in which the actual silver will be Kuping Tls. 0.648, which is the nominal value of the Yuan Shih-kai dollar, and the weight of the coined dollar will be approximately Shanghai Tls..73 or Tientsin Tls..71, The establishment of such a mint, which will be operated by the bankers until the redemption of the notes, is designed to force the provincial mints to raise the standard of coinage and perhaps to abolish them altogether and to meet the requirements of foreign big for the abolition of the tael.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.