5 Yuan / Dollars Bank of China

The Bank of China 1918 series was issued during a period when the bank was still recalibrating after the 1916 moratorium crisis, during which numerous Chinese banks had suspended convertibility under government pressure. The American Bank Note Company's involvement was typical of the era's practice among Chinese financial institutions of sourcing security printing abroad, partly to signal credibility to foreign merchants and treaty-port depositors who trusted Western-printed paper over domestic production.

Pick 52B denotes a specific place-of-payment overprint variant — the base note exists across multiple branches, distinguished primarily by the overprinted issuing location rather than any change to the underlying plate.