1 Jiao / 10 Cents Bank of China

The Bank of China was reorganized from the old Qing dynasty's Da-Qing Bank in 1912, and by 1917 it was still fighting for credibility against a chaotic field of provincial banks, foreign concession banks, and military-backed note issuers. Small denominations like this 1 Jiao were particularly important in that struggle — copper and silver coin shortages made fractional paper essential for daily trade in a way that larger notes simply weren't.

The 财政部印刷局 was one of the few domestic facilities technically capable of producing notes with any real resistance to counterfeiting, which made it the Ministry of Finance's preferred press for nationally significant issues.