200 Yuan Bank of Pei Hai

The Bank of Pei Hai (北海银行) was established in 1938 in the Shandong-based communist-controlled Bohai region and functioned as a financial instrument of the CCP's guerrilla administration during the Second Sino-Japanese War. By 1945 it had expanded operations considerably, issuing higher denominations to cope with wartime inflationary pressure in liberated areas. Notes of this period circulated alongside — and often in direct competition with — Japanese military yen and puppet-regime currencies, all three systems vying for acceptance in the same villages.

Pick S3596 falls into a category of border-region issues that were printed under genuinely difficult conditions, sometimes on whatever paper stock was available, which affects consistency across surviving examples. The bank was eventually absorbed into the People's Bank of China at its founding in 1948.