5 Dollars

The Imperial Bank of China was established in 1897 as a quasi-governmental institution — China's first modern bank with Western-style organization — but it never achieved the dominance its backers anticipated. British commercial interests held significant influence over its early operations, which explains the London printing contract with Bradbury, Wilkinson rather than any domestic facility. By 1904 the bank was already losing ground to the Russo-Chinese Bank and the Hongkong and Shanghai Banking Corporation.

The institution was absorbed and reorganized following the 1911 revolution. Notes from the 1904 series survived in relatively small numbers, partly because circulation was geographically uneven — concentrated in treaty port areas rather than distributed nationally.