100 - Taizong of Tang 598-649 AD

This note belongs to the fifth series of Renminbi, introduced by the People's Bank of China beginning in 1999. The fifth series marked a significant modernization of Chinese banknote production, incorporating intaglio printing, color-shifting ink, and embedded security threads — a deliberate response to increasingly sophisticated counterfeiting of fourth-series notes that had plagued circulation through the 1990s.

Taizong of Tang, the Tang dynasty emperor whose reign is associated with the so-called "Reign of Zhenguan," is among the most consistently celebrated rulers in Chinese historiography. His selection for currency was a political as much as a cultural choice.