10 Fen

Issued by the Central Bank of China during the early years of the Second Sino-Japanese War, this small-denomination coin circulated alongside a rapidly deteriorating paper currency as the Nationalist government struggled to finance its wartime operations from the temporary capital at Chongqing. Metal coinage of this period grew increasingly difficult to sustain — by 1942, the pressures on raw material supply forced the abandonment of copper-nickel in favor of cheaper alloys, making this one of the last issues in the composition.