5 Yuan Bank of China

The Bank of China's 1935 series was issued under the Nationalist government's currency reform of that same year, which consolidated note-issuing authority among four major government banks and officially moved China off the silver standard. The timing matters: within two years, the Second Sino-Japanese War would disrupt distribution networks entirely, meaning notes from this series circulated under dramatically different conditions than those anticipated at issue.

De La Rue's London production gave the series a quality of engraving that domestic Chinese presses could not yet match — a deliberate political signal about the Nationalist government's financial credibility to foreign creditors.