5 Yuan Central Bank of China

By 1941, Nationalist China's printing infrastructure was severely disrupted — Chongqing, the wartime capital, lacked the capacity to meet demand, so the Central Bank continued to contract overseas. Waterlow & Sons had supplied Chinese currency well before the Japanese invasion, and that relationship held even as the war ground on. The notes were shipped through increasingly dangerous supply routes.

Rampant wartime inflation meant denominations like this 5 Yuan were being superseded in purchasing power almost as fast as they could be distributed. Within two years, the Central Bank was issuing notes in the hundreds and then thousands of yuan.