1000 Yuan Central Bank of China

By 1942, the Central Bank of China was printing in denominations unthinkable a decade earlier — inflation driven by wartime expenditure against Japan had forced a rapid escalation in note values throughout the early 1940s. Thomas De La Rue's London facility continued producing notes for the Nationalist government even as the war made logistics increasingly difficult, with finished notes transported under considerable risk.

The watermark is the sole security feature, modest for a De La Rue production but in keeping with the series. Forgery was a known problem — Japanese military intelligence ran organized counterfeiting operations targeting Nationalist currency specifically to destabilize the economy.