5 Yuan Central Bank of China

By 1941, China's wartime finances were under severe strain — Japanese forces had overrun much of eastern China, forcing the Nationalist government to retreat to Chongqing and rely increasingly on foreign-printed currency to maintain monetary credibility. Thomas De La Rue's involvement was partly a matter of trust: domestically printed issues were vulnerable to Japanese counterfeiting operations, some of which were sophisticated enough to pass in rural markets.

Pick 235 belongs to a period when the Central Bank was issuing multiple overlapping series simultaneously, often with identical denominations but differing printers, signatures, and security specifications — a deliberate strategy against forgery that now creates significant attribution headaches for collectors.