25 Yuan Bank of Pei Hai

The Bank of Pei Hai was a Communist-controlled regional bank operating in the Shandong-Bohai base area during the civil war period, and its notes circulated in direct competition with Nationalist currency as part of a deliberate economic strategy to consolidate CCP financial control over liberated zones. This 25 yuan denomination is an unusual unit — not a round figure by conventional banking logic — likely chosen to facilitate specific local commodity transactions or grain pricing in the rural economy the bank was designed to serve.

Pei Hai notes were eventually absorbed into the unified Renminbi system when the People's Bank of China was established in December 1948, at which point most outstanding notes were redeemed and destroyed. Survivors are disproportionately scarce relative to original print runs.