The Farmer's Bank of Northwest China was a communist-controlled institution operating out of the Shaan-Gan-Ning Border Region — the Yan'an base area governed by the Chinese Communist Party during the Second Sino-Japanese War. It issued currency in direct competition with Nationalist legal tender, and Chiang Kai-shek's government never recognized these notes as legitimate. The bank's emissions were a deliberate instrument of economic administration in territory the KMT could not control.
The S-prefix Pick designation signals this is a regional issue, catalogued separately from the central government series. Border region notes from 1943 rarely survived in quantity — wartime paper stocks were poor, and post-1949 significance meant many were discarded rather than preserved once the People's Republic issued its own unified currency.
The Farmer's Bank of Northwest China was a communist-controlled institution operating out of the Shaan-Gan-Ning Border Region — the Yan'an base area governed by the Chinese Communist Party during the Second Sino-Japanese War. It issued currency in direct competition with Nationalist legal tender, and Chiang Kai-shek's government never recognized these notes as legitimate. The bank's emissions were a deliberate instrument of economic administration in territory the KMT could not control.
The S-prefix Pick designation signals this is a regional issue, catalogued separately from the central government series. Border region notes from 1943 rarely survived in quantity — wartime paper stocks were poor, and post-1949 significance meant many were discarded rather than preserved once the People's Republic issued its own unified currency.