500 Yuan Sino-Singapore Friendship

The Sino-Singapore Friendship gold series was issued to commemorate the formal diplomatic relationship established between the PRC and Singapore in 1990 — notably late given Singapore's ethnic Chinese majority, a product of Cold War-era regional politics and Lee Kuan Yew's careful balancing act between Beijing and Taiwan over several decades.

At five troy ounces of fine gold, this is a prestige bullion issue rather than a circulation piece, produced for the collector and gift-giving market that Chinese state mints aggressively cultivated throughout the 1990s.