5 Yuan Soviet Red Army

Issued by Soviet occupation forces following the August 1945 campaign against Japanese-held Manchuria, this note was part of a military currency series introduced to facilitate troop spending and requisitioning in occupied territory. The Soviet command printed these notes without backing from any Manchurian or Chinese monetary authority — they were imposed on the local economy unilaterally, and the population had no formal mechanism to refuse them.

Chinese Nationalist and later Communist administrations both declined to recognize the series as redeemable, leaving civilians who had accepted the notes with paper of no recoverable value. The Pick M-series designation reflects its classification as military scrip rather than a sovereign issue.