25 Yuan Bank of Pei Hai

The Bank of Pei Hai (北海银行) was established in 1938 in the Shandong-based Communist-controlled Jiaodong border region and became one of the more substantial of the CCP's regional currency-issuing banks during the Second Sino-Japanese War and subsequent civil conflict. Its notes circulated as genuine transactional currency within liberated zone economies, not merely as propaganda instruments — the bank actively managed exchange rates against Nationalist fiat to protect local purchasing power in areas under its administration.

The 1945 date places this note in the final phase of the anti-Japanese resistance, when the border region banks were consolidating authority ahead of the postwar confrontation with the KMT. Pei Hai notes were ultimately absorbed into the People's Bank of China system when the renminbi was introduced in 1948–49.