500 Yuan

The Central Reserve Bank of China was a Japanese-sponsored institution established in Nanjing in 1941 to manage currency in the occupied territories. Its notes were designed to displace the Nationalist fabi and the older Federal Reserve Bank issues in Japanese-controlled areas, flooding circulation to suppress competing currencies and extract real economic value from the occupied population — a documented tool of wartime financial control.

The J24A belongs to a substantial 1943 printing run at a moment when the occupation economy was deteriorating. Inflation in occupied China was severe enough that 500 Yuan, a very high denomination just two years earlier, was already losing practical meaning by the time these notes reached circulation.