500 Yuan

The Central Reserve Bank of China was a Japanese-sponsored institution operating in the occupied territories of northern and central China, established in Nanking in 1941 under the Wang Jingwei collaborationist regime. This 1943 issue came at a period of accelerating inflation across occupied China, when the competing currencies of the puppet administrations, the Chongqing Nationalist government, and the Communist-controlled areas were all being weaponized — deliberately flooded or counterfeited — as tools of economic warfare.

Japanese military authorities used the Central Reserve Bank's notes to extract resources from occupied populations, issuing currency backed by nothing while confiscating goods at fixed rates. By 1945 the series had inflated to near worthlessness. The watermark security feature did little to deter the sophisticated counterfeiting operations run by both Nationalist and Allied agencies during this period.