10 Yuan Bank of Kuantung

The Kwan Tung Bank was established by the Soviet-backed Chinese Communist forces following the Soviet Red Army's occupation of Manchuria in 1945. This note dates from 1948, the critical year during which Communist forces consolidated control over the northeast ahead of the final campaigns of the Civil War — and the Kwan Tung Bank's currency was a deliberate tool for supplanting both Nationalist legal tender and the residual Soviet-issued "Red Army scrip" that had circulated chaotically after 1945.

The bank was short-lived. Once the People's Republic was established and the People's Bank of China unified the currency in 1949, Kwan Tung Bank notes were withdrawn rapidly. Surviving examples in any grade are genuinely scarce.