10 000 Yuan Central Bank of China

By 1947, the Central Bank of China was printing in denominations that would have been unthinkable a decade earlier. Hyperinflation driven by wartime military expenditure and postwar Nationalist-Communist hostilities was destroying purchasing power faster than the presses could respond — the 10,000 Yuan note, enormous by prewar standards, was becoming inadequate almost as soon as it circulated.

Thomas De La Rue printed this in London while China was in open civil war. The logistical reality of commissioning high-denomination emergency currency from a British security printer 8,000 miles away says something about the Nationalist government's continued reliance on foreign printing infrastructure even as its political position was collapsing.