10 Yuan Socrates

China's "Famous Men of Culture" silver series, issued through the 1990s, was an unusual exercise in state-sanctioned celebration of Western intellectual figures — unusual because the program was driven almost entirely by export demand from European and American collectors rather than any domestic commemorative purpose. Socrates appeared in the 1994 release alongside other classical thinkers, the coins sold primarily through foreign distributors and largely unseen inside China itself.

Mintages for this series were tightly controlled by the China Mint, and the 1994 issues were struck in comparatively modest numbers relative to the bullion issues of the same period.