10000 Yuan

The Bank of Taiwan's 1948 high-denomination issues emerged directly from hyperinflation on the Chinese mainland bleeding into Taiwan's monetary system. The Central Printing Factory — operating under Nationalist government authority — was producing notes in denominations that would have been unthinkable just years earlier, as the gold yuan and its predecessors collapsed in rapid succession. A 10,000 Yuan note in 1948 was not a prestige instrument; it was a symptom.

Taiwan would replace this currency with the New Taiwan Dollar in June 1949, pegged at 40,000 of the old yuan to one new dollar — which gives some sense of where purchasing power had gone.