10 Cents / 1 Jiao - Wilhelm II

Kiau Chau (Jiaozhou) was a German-leased territory on the Shandong coast, seized following the murder of two German missionaries in 1897 and formalized under a 99-year lease the following year. This 1909 issue came just five years before the territory's fall — Japan declared war on Germany in August 1914 and captured Tsingtau after a siege, ending the German presence entirely. The colonial coinage was struck in Berlin, not locally, and circulated alongside Chinese cash in a port economy built almost entirely around the naval base at Tsingtau.