500 Dollars Bank of China

The Bank of China $500 issued under this series was a Hong Kong dollar note, part of the three-bank arrangement that allowed Hongkong and Shanghai Banking Corporation, Standard Chartered, and Bank of China to issue currency in the territory — an unusual plural-issuer system that survived the 1997 handover intact. Bank of China's role as an issuer was itself politically significant: it became the first mainland-affiliated institution to issue Hong Kong currency when it joined the arrangement in 1994, directly displacing the Chartered Bank from that privilege.

The timing of this series across 1994–2000 means some examples straddle the handover year, though the notes themselves carried no design modification to mark that transition.