500 Yuan Federal Reserve Bank of China

The Federal Reserve Bank of China was a Japanese-sponsored institution established in 1938 to manage currency in the occupied territories of north China. Its notes circulated in parallel with — and were explicitly designed to displace — Nationalist Chinese currency, functioning as an instrument of economic occupation rather than conventional central banking. By 1945, with Japanese control collapsing, these high-denomination notes were being issued in volume to meet wartime inflation, not genuine economic demand.

Surviving examples frequently show evidence of hasty circulation in the final months before Japan's surrender in August 1945, after which the notes were demonetized by the returning Nationalist administration. The Federal Reserve Bank itself was formally dissolved shortly thereafter.