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5 Dollars
| Issuer | General Bank of Communications |
|---|---|
| Year | 1909 |
| Type | Standard circulation banknote |
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| Obverse description | Green and multicolour note dated March 1st 1909, with two dragons flanking a central vignette of a ship, railway station and train. The denomination FIVE DOLLARS is inscribed in large letterpress text at centre, with guilloche underprint panels at left and right bearing the numeral 5. Canton branch designation appears at the base within a cartouche. |
|---|---|
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| Variants | P#A15a - Issued note P#A15b - Cancelled with perforated Chinese characters |
| Comments |
The General Bank of Communications (交通银行, Jiaotong Yinhang) was founded in 1908 under the Qing Ministry of Posts and Communications, primarily to finance railway and telegraph construction — making it one of the few Chinese banks of the period with a genuinely industrial mandate rather than a purely fiscal one. This 1909 issue predates the Republic by two years and was printed by Carlisle & MacLean, a Shanghai-based agency that handled early Chinese institutional printing before the major Western security printers consolidated their grip on the market.
CMPA-printed notes from this bank are scarcer in the catalog than later issues handled by firms like American Bank Note Company, largely because the relationship was short-lived.