100 Yuan Bank of Chinan

The Bank of Chinan was a communist-controlled regional bank operating in the Shandong-Jiangsu border region during the final years of the Second Sino-Japanese War. Its notes circulated in territory contested between Japanese occupation forces, the Nationalist government, and Communist Party administration — a zone where currency confidence was enforced more by political control than economic backing.

By 1945, the bank was issuing high-denomination notes to cope with wartime inflation that had eroded smaller values almost entirely. The S-prefix in the Pick reference reflects its classification as a regional or quasi-governmental issue rather than a central bank emission.