1 Chiao / 10 Cents 7th Administrative District Shansi-Chahar-Hopei Area Cooperative Society

The Shansi-Chahar-Hopei Border Region — the Jin-Cha-Ji base area — was one of the most politically and militarily significant Communist-controlled zones of the Second Sino-Japanese War. Cooperative societies within these districts issued their own small-denomination scrip partly to displace Japanese Military Yen and puppet bank currencies that had flooded rural markets after 1937. The 7th District notes were functional instruments of economic resistance as much as anything else.

1941 was a particularly difficult year for the border region — Japanese mopping-up campaigns intensified, supply lines contracted, and local financial institutions operated under genuine threat of destruction. Notes from this period that survived did so largely by accident.