4 Liang - Oil Stamp Shangrao County, Jiangxi

Oil stamp grain coupons from county-level bureaus occupy a specific and poorly documented niche in Chinese planned-economy ephemera. Shangrao County, in northeastern Jiangxi, ran its own grain distribution system parallel to provincial and national ration structures — the "oil stamp" designation marks this as an edible oil coupon rather than a grain-by-weight ration, the two systems being administered separately at the local level throughout the 1980s.

By 1985, market liberalization was already eroding the coupon system's practical necessity, though dismantlement at the county level lagged well behind national policy shifts. These local oil coupons typically saw short-run printings and near-total consumption in use, which accounts for the near-absence of county-level examples in systematic collections.