50 Cash Support the Republic, brass

Yunnan's Republican-era cash issues emerged from a province that had functioned with considerable autonomy since the 1911 revolution, and the "Support the Republic" inscription was as much a political declaration as a monetary one — Yunnan military governors used coinage to signal loyalty or defiance toward whoever held Beijing at a given moment. By 1919, the province was effectively under the control of Tang Jiyao, whose warlord administration maintained its own financial infrastructure largely independent of the nominally national government.

Brass was chosen over copper partly due to local resource availability in Yunnan's mining-rich interior.