1 Jiao / 10 Cents

The Central Bank of China was printing notes like this one even as the Nationalist government was collapsing around it. By 1949, hyperinflation had so thoroughly destroyed public confidence in paper currency that denominations this small were effectively irrelevant to daily commerce — the gold yuan, introduced in 1948 as a stabilization measure, had already failed catastrophically within months. This 1 Jiao piece was issued into an economy where denominations in the millions were commonplace.

Chung Hwa Book Co. was one of several Shanghai-based printers the Nationalist government relied on heavily in its final years, as foreign printing arrangements became logistically and politically untenable. The firm had deep roots in commercial publishing before its involvement in security printing.