1 Dollar

The Imperial Bank of China was the country's first modern bank with a formal charter — established by imperial edict in 1897 under the supervision of Sheng Xuanhuai, who had already built China's telegraph and railway infrastructure. It was conceived as a state-backed institution capable of issuing national currency, though in practice its notes circulated unevenly and faced fierce competition from well-entrenched foreign banks operating under treaty-port protections.

Bradbury, Wilkinson produced the plates in London at a moment when the bank's domestic credibility was still being established. The series was short-lived; the 1911 revolution effectively ended the institution's relevance, and surviving 1898 notes are genuinely uncommon, particularly in the lower denominations.