20 Yuan Bank of Central China

The Bank of Central China (中央中国银行 in some references, more correctly 华中银行, Huazhong Yinhang) was a Communist-administered regional bank established in 1945 to consolidate currency control across the Jianghan, Jianghuai, and Jiangnan base areas. This 1946 issue came during a period of intensifying civil conflict, when the CCP and Nationalist government were nominally observing a ceasefire while both sides aggressively expanded their financial infrastructure in contested territory.

Regional Communist-issued notes from this period were typically declared invalid in Nationalist-controlled zones, and many were destroyed during KMT military advances into central China between 1946 and 1947, which accounts for the relative scarcity of surviving examples from this issuer.