Issued as part of China's annual Lunar New Year commemorative program, which the People's Bank of China established in the 1980s as both a cultural project and a hard-currency export product aimed squarely at the overseas Chinese collector market. By 1997, the series had grown into a reliable foreign exchange earner, with mintages calibrated to demand from Hong Kong, Taiwan, and diaspora buyers rather than domestic circulation.
1997 carried obvious political weight — the handover of Hong Kong on July 1st dominated the year's commemorative calendar, making non-handover issues from that year somewhat overshadowed in the secondary market.
Issued as part of China's annual Lunar New Year commemorative program, which the People's Bank of China established in the 1980s as both a cultural project and a hard-currency export product aimed squarely at the overseas Chinese collector market. By 1997, the series had grown into a reliable foreign exchange earner, with mintages calibrated to demand from Hong Kong, Taiwan, and diaspora buyers rather than domestic circulation.
1997 carried obvious political weight — the handover of Hong Kong on July 1st dominated the year's commemorative calendar, making non-handover issues from that year somewhat overshadowed in the secondary market.