2000 Yuan Unicorn

China's Unicorn series launched in 1994 as a direct competitor to the Panda program, targeting the international bullion collector market at a moment when Hong Kong's impending handover was generating significant foreign interest in Chinese state issues. The 1996 kilogram gold represents the largest denomination in that series run.

Mintages for the kilogram unicorn pieces were extremely low — typically in the low hundreds — and were allocated primarily through Bank of China channels to overseas buyers rather than domestic circulation.