2000 Yuan Central Bank of China

The Central Bank of China's wartime high-denomination issues were printed abroad precisely because Japanese occupation and bombing had rendered domestic printing infrastructure unreliable. Thomas De La Rue's London facilities handled several of these contracts, delivering finished notes that then had to be transported into Free China — a supply chain complicated by the Pacific War after December 1941.

By 1942, Nationalist currency was deteriorating rapidly under wartime inflation. A 2000 Yuan note, enormous by prewar standards, was already struggling to keep pace with prices before it left the press.