2 Cents

The Peiping Municipal Bank was a short-lived local institution operating under the renamed city — Beijing had been formally redesignated Peiping ("Northern Peace") in 1928 by the Nationalist government, a deliberate demotion from its status as a capital. By 1937, Japanese forces seized the city following the Marco Polo Bridge Incident in July, effectively ending any legitimate municipal authority. Notes issued that year occupy an ambiguous moment: printed under one political order, circulated under another.

The 2-cent denomination is fractional small change, almost certainly printed to address a severe shortage of coin in local commerce — a persistent problem across northern China throughout the 1930s.