5 Yuan Hunan-Hupeh Border Construction Bank

The Yu-O Border Area — straddling Hunan and Hubei provinces — was one of several Communist-controlled base areas that maintained parallel financial systems during the Second Sino-Japanese War. Local border banks issued their own currency partly to resist Japanese military scrip and puppet bank notes, which were being deliberately flooded into occupied and contested zones to destabilize the regional economy. Acceptance of the border notes was enforced within Communist-administered territory as a matter of political control as much as economic necessity.

The unlisted Pick status reflects how poorly documented this issue remains. Border area notes from this period survive in very small numbers, and attribution is complicated by the overlapping jurisdictions of several short-lived regional institutions with near-identical names.