10 Dollars

The Ningpo Commercial Bank (寧波商業銀行) was one of the earliest Chinese-owned modern commercial banks, founded in 1908 in Shanghai by a consortium of Ningbo merchants — the same tight-knit trading network that had dominated Chinese coastal finance for generations. This note, issued in the bank's first full year of operation, reflects the transitional moment when private Chinese banks were beginning to issue their own currency in direct competition with foreign treaty-port banks.

Toppan Printing Company's Shanghai facility handled production, placing the entire job within China rather than routing it to London or New York as many contemporaries did. The bank collapsed during the financial turbulence of the 1930s.