1 000 000 Yuan

By mid-1949, the Nationalist government's gold yuan reform had already collapsed, and the Central Bank of China was printing denominations that would have been unthinkable two years earlier. This one-million yuan note was part of the final hyperinflationary cascade — the gold yuan itself, introduced in August 1948 as a supposed stabilizing currency, lost virtually all value within months, forcing the issuance of ever-larger denominations before the Nationalist retreat to Taiwan effectively ended mainland operations.

Chung Hwa Book Co. had been printing currency and official documents in Shanghai for decades, but by this point the presses were racing against economic collapse rather than serving any functional monetary purpose.