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50 Yuan
| Issuer | People's Bank of China |
|---|---|
| Year | 1948 |
| Type | Standard circulation banknote |
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| Obverse description | A central vignette presents an industrial landscape with a donkey-powered well at left and a coal mine with smoking factory chimneys at right, printed in reddish-brown tones. The denomination 伍拾圓 (Fifty Yuan) appears in large characters at centre within a decorative guilloche frame. The bank title 中國人民銀行 runs along the top border, with the Republican calendar date 中華民國三十七年 (Year 37 of the Republic of China) inscribed along the lower margin. |
|---|---|
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| Reverse description | The reverse is dominated by an intricate guilloche rosette at centre bearing the numeral 50 within a star-shaped ornamental frame, flanked on each side by rectangular panels also carrying the numeral 50. Leafy vine branch ornaments fill the lateral borders, and the bank title 中國人民銀行 is inscribed at the top. The year 1948 appears at the base of the central design, with repeated 50 numerals in the corner panels. |
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| Comments |
This note belongs to the First Series of Renminbi, issued by the newly established People's Bank of China in December 1948 — a bank founded only weeks before the note itself appeared, as the Communist Party moved to unify the several regional currencies circulating in liberated zones. The consolidation was politically urgent: the PLA's rapid territorial gains meant a patchwork of local military currencies had to be replaced fast, and the First Series was printed under wartime conditions across multiple facilities, which accounts for the significant variation in paper quality and printing fidelity across the series.
Genuine examples are considerably scarcer than their nominal issue figures suggest — large quantities were withdrawn and destroyed after the Second Series replaced First Series notes in the early 1950s.