Catalog
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| Issuer | Kwangtung Provincial Bank |
|---|---|
| Year | 1931 |
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| Printer | American Bank Note Company, New York, United States |
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|---|---|
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| Reverse description | Printed in brown, the reverse carries a central vignette of the Sun Yat-sen Memorial Hall in Canton. Serial numbers appear in either red or blue ink. |
| Reverse lettering | The Kwangtung Provincial Bank Promises to pay the bearer on demand at its office here One Dollar National Currency 1931 American Bank Note Company |
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| Comments |
The Kwangtung Provincial Bank was established in 1924 under the Guangdong provincial government, then effectively a rival power center to Beijing under Sun Yat-sen's Kuomintang. Provincial bank notes from this period circulated in a monetary environment where dozens of competing local and national issues overlapped, and credibility rested heavily on the prestige of the printer. Commissioning the American Bank Note Company was a deliberate signal to merchant communities in Canton and Hong Kong that the paper carried genuine backing.
ABNC produced the plates in New York; the notes were shipped to Guangdong for issue. The series ran into the mid-1930s before the Nationalist government's 1935 currency reform — which nationalized note-issuing authority under the Central Bank — effectively ended independent provincial circulation.