10 Yuan 100th Anniversary of Liu Shaoqi

Liu Shaoqi's centenary commemorative was issued just three decades after his death under circumstances the Chinese state had spent years trying to reframe. Once Mao's designated successor and head of state, Liu was purged in 1968 at the height of the Cultural Revolution, stripped of all titles, denied medical treatment, and died in detention in 1969. His formal rehabilitation came only in 1980, when the Party officially reversed its verdict and declared the persecution a historic mistake.

The decision to issue a state commemorative eighteen years after that rehabilitation signals how completely the official narrative had been rewritten by the late 1990s.