200 Yuan Bank of Central China

The Bank of Central China was established by the Communist Party in 1945 to serve the liberated areas of central China — Hubei, Hunan, and Jiangxi — as Nationalist and Communist forces moved toward open civil war. This 200 Yuan note dates from 1946, when the bank was actively displacing both Japanese occupation currency and competing regional issues in areas recently wrested from Japanese control.

The S-prefix Pick number flags it as a regional or provisional issue rather than a central government note — a distinction that mattered enormously in 1946, when monetary authority in China was genuinely contested territory.