2000 Yuan Central Bank of China

The Central Bank of China issued enormous denominations in 1945 as wartime inflation — already severe after years of conflict with Japan — began accelerating toward the hyperinflationary collapse that would make the Nationalist currency essentially worthless by 1948–49. A 2,000 Yuan note that would have represented significant purchasing power in the late 1930s was, by 1945, a routine transactional denomination.

The Central Bank of China Printing Works produced this domestically, a necessity since wartime conditions had severely disrupted the prewar arrangement of contracting foreign security printers.