After Puyi's abdication, one of the preferential conditions stipulated by the Nanjing Provisional Government for the Manchu Qing imperial family was indeed to allocate 4 million yuan to him every year, but not to mention that the Beiyang government never paid this money in full to the royal family, and even if it was paid, these funds were not enough for the living expenses of the Manchu Qing widows and children in the Forbidden City. The reason is that although the Qing Emperor abdicated, there was already an institution in the Forbidden City that managed the life of the royal family, the Ministry of Internal Affairs, and the officials of the Ministry of Internal Affairs were responsible for all the expenses of the living quarters of the members of the royal family.
In the early years of the Republic of China, due to the demise of the Qing government, there was a certain chaos in the situation, so there were more than a dozen currencies circulating in the market at that time. However, in 1914, the government of the Republic of China promulgated the "National Currency Regulations", which determined that the "silver dollar" was the currency of the Republic of China, and the "silver dollar" was what we commonly known as "Yuan Datou". Since then, the Beiyang government has exchanged the 4 million taels of silver given to Puyi for 4 million silver dollars.
According to the absolute value of the calculation, under the premise of constant rice prices, the purchasing power of a silver dollar is about 80 yuan, so calculated, 4 million yuan, is equivalent to today's 320 million yuan, but the wage level at that time, the monthly wage of workers is only between 3 and 11 silver dollars, calculated on average, 4 million yuan in the early years of the Republic of China, which can be exchanged for 2.773 billion yuan today. At that time, in addition to eating and drinking Lhasa, if Puyi wanted to cultivate his own army, even 50,000 people needed about 3 million basic military salaries, not to mention other weapons and equipment, this money to maintain the normal living expenses of the Qing Dynasty royal family was also OK.
It's just that sometimes the money can't be in place in time, sometimes it's too extravagant, resulting in the lack of green and yellow, as for the army is not able to be equipped, before you recruit troops and buy horses, someone will surround you early, after all, Yuan Shikai and his party are not vegetarians.