2 Jiao / 20 Cents Central Bank of China

The Central Bank of China's 1940 small denomination issues were printed under increasingly difficult conditions — Japanese forces had occupied Shanghai's International Settlement perimeter, and the city's printing industry operated in a strange twilight of continued commercial function and wartime pressure. Chung Hwa Book Co. was one of the few domestic printers with the technical capacity to handle currency work, and the Bank leaned on it heavily as access to foreign printers like American Bank Note Company became logistically complicated.

The 20-cent denomination served a genuine transactional need in a period of accelerating inflation, though its purchasing power eroded quickly after issue.