500 Yuan Bank of China

The Bank of China's 1941 series was produced in the United States because Japanese military advances had made domestic printing impossible — by this point, most of China's coastal printing infrastructure was either occupied or destroyed. American Bank Note Company in New York handled several of these wartime contracts, working from engraved plates to standards that Chinese government printers could no longer meet under occupation conditions.

The 500 Yuan denomination reflects the accelerating inflation that plagued Nationalist-controlled China throughout the war years. Notes of this face value, unthinkable before the late 1930s, had become a practical necessity by 1941 as the fabi currency lost purchasing power against wartime commodity prices.

Wartime shipping meant delivery of printed stock was neither guaranteed nor timely.