5 000 000 Yuan

By mid-1949, the Nationalist government's monetary position had collapsed entirely. The gold yuan reform of 1948 had already failed catastrophically, and the Central Bank of China was issuing notes in denominations that would have been unimaginable eighteen months earlier. Five million yuan on a single note is not hyperbole — it is the arithmetic of a currency in terminal free fall, losing purchasing power faster than the presses could output new denominations.

Chung Hwa Book Company, primarily a publisher and printer with deep roots in Shanghai, had been pressed into banknote production as the Nationalist printing infrastructure fragmented under military pressure from Communist forces advancing southward.