5 Yuan Bank of China

The Bank of China's 1934 series was printed by De La Rue at a time when the Chinese government was navigating serious monetary instability — the silver standard was collapsing under deflationary pressure from global silver price movements, and the fabi currency reform that would abandon silver entirely was still a year away. These notes circulated under an increasingly strained system.

De La Rue's involvement with Chinese banking paper dates back decades, and their work for the Bank of China in this period is technically accomplished. P#72 is reasonably available in mid-grades; high-grade survivors are complicated by the humid storage conditions common to wartime and postwar Chinese banking archives.