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1000 Yuan
| Issuer | People's Bank of China |
|---|---|
| Year | 1949 |
| Type | Standard circulation banknote |
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| Obverse description | Central vignette of a horse-drawn cart heavily laden with harvested grain, moving through a cultivated field with industrial smokestacks visible on the horizon; workers are shown harvesting in the left background. The bank name in Chinese characters is printed at the top, with the denomination in large characters at center-left, and two red seal stamps appear at the lower center. The border is composed of intricate guilloche patterns with corner ornaments, and the serial number and series prefix appear in the upper right. |
|---|---|
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| Reverse description | The reverse is printed in olive-brown on a plain background, with the bank name in Chinese characters at the top center within a simple frame. A large central guilloche rosette is flanked by the numeral denomination '1000' on each side, with the Chinese characters for 'One Thousand Yuan' at center. The entire design is enclosed within an ornate border of interlocking guilloche scrollwork, and the year '1949' appears at the bottom center. |
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| Comments |
This note belongs to the First Series Renminbi (第一套人民币), the currency issued by the People's Bank of China beginning in December 1948 as Communist forces consolidated control across the mainland. The series was a deliberate unification tool — replacing a chaotic patchwork of regional Communist currencies that had circulated in liberated zones during the civil war.
The First Series was printed under severely constrained wartime conditions, using multiple printers with inconsistent equipment and paper stocks. As a result, the series is notorious for variation: different printers produced subtly different versions of the same denomination, and ink quality varies considerably. Collectors treat many of these variants as distinct collectibles in their own right.
The entire First Series was withdrawn and demonetized in 1955 when the Second Series was introduced at a conversion rate of 10,000 old yuan to 1 new yuan — a ratio that underscored just how badly inflation had ravaged the currency's purchasing power during the late Republican period.