1 Cent Kwangtung Provincial Bank

The Kwangtung Provincial Bank's 1-cent note of 1949 belongs to one of the most chaotic monetary episodes in modern Chinese history. By the time this note was printed, the Nationalist government's gold yuan reform — launched in August 1948 to replace the collapsed fiat yuan — had itself collapsed within months, triggering hyperinflationary conditions that made fractional-cent denominations both absurd and briefly necessary as provincial authorities scrambled to maintain any functional small-change circulation.

The Chung Hua Book Company was among the more reliable printers available to Nationalist-aligned institutions in this period, though by 1949 even their output was being overtaken by political events. Guangdong fell to Communist forces in October 1949.