10 Dollars

The Imperial Bank of China was established by imperial edict in 1897 as the country's first modern joint-stock bank with semi-official status — a hybrid institution designed to compete with foreign banks that had long dominated Chinese commercial finance. This note dates to its inaugural year of note issuance, making it among the earliest paper money the bank produced. Bradbury, Wilkinson printed the series in London, a common arrangement for Chinese institutions of the period that lacked domestic security printing infrastructure capable of meeting anti-counterfeiting standards.

The bank's influence was short-lived. It lost its privileged position after the Boxer Uprising and was eventually absorbed into reorganized state banking structures. Early issues like this one had limited circulation time before institutional upheaval curtailed distribution.