5 Yuan / Dollars Canton

By the time this note was issued in 1949, the Central Bank of China was in its death throes. Hyperinflation had already destroyed the gold yuan introduced just the previous year — itself an emergency replacement for the collapsed fabi — and the Nationalist government was hemorrhaging territory to Communist forces. Notes denominated in single digits were functionally meaningless within weeks of printing.

Chung Hwa Book Co. was a Shanghai commercial printer pressed repeatedly into currency production as the established facilities struggled to keep pace with demand. The Canton designation locates the note within a regional series issued as the Nationalists attempted to maintain some semblance of monetary administration in southern China ahead of their eventual retreat to Taiwan.