1 Dollar Kwangtung Provincial Bank

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.