100 Yuan Blue underprint

This note belongs to the First Series Renminbi (第一套人民币), issued as the People's Liberation Army was still consolidating control across the mainland. The People's Bank of China had only been formally established in December 1948, and the first-series notes were printed under extraordinarily chaotic wartime conditions — across multiple facilities, with inconsistent paper stocks and varying print quality as a result. No single standardized production run existed for the series as a whole.

First-series 100 Yuan notes in particular are among the more difficult denominations to find without fading or foxing, owing to the low-grade paper used during production. The entire first series was withdrawn from circulation in 1955 when the second series introduced the "fen" subdivision system at a conversion rate of 10,000 old yuan to 1 new yuan.