50 Grams - Food Stamp Baotou City, Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region

Chinese municipal grain ration coupons of this period were administered through local grain bureaus under the national rationing system that had been in place since the mid-1950s. By 1991, the central government was actively unwinding that system — urban rationing was abolished nationally in 1993 — which means coupons issued in this final window were often printed in smaller quantities than earlier issues and saw correspondingly shorter active use before the entire apparatus was dismantled.

Baotou, as a major industrial center built around steel production, had an unusually large registered urban population dependent on state grain allocation, giving municipal coupons here a practical urgency that more rural-administrative issuers lacked.