500 Yuan

The Central Reserve Bank of China was a Japanese-sponsored institution operating in the occupied territories of central China, headquartered in Nanking under the Wang Jingwei collaborationist regime. Its notes circulated alongside — and in direct competition with — Chongqing-issued Nationalist currency, with the occupying authorities making deliberate efforts to drive legitimate currency out of circulation and destabilize the Nationalist monetary system.

By 1943, inflation was accelerating sharply in occupied areas, and higher denominations like this 500 Yuan were a symptom of that pressure. F.H. Chou served as governor through this period of increasingly degraded purchasing power.