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5000 Customs Gold Units
| Issuer | Central Bank of China |
|---|---|
| Year | 1947 |
| Type | Log in to see details |
| Value | Log in to see details |
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| Composition | Log in to see details |
| Size | 163 × 73 mm |
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| Engraver(s) | Log in to see details |
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|---|---|
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| Reverse description | Vignette of the Central Bank of China headquarters building in Shanghai, rendered in intaglio style within a finely engraved frame, occupying the upper half of the note. Below, the numeral 5000 appears in large stylised lettering within a guilloche cartouche, with the English inscription FIVE THOUSAND CUSTOMS GOLD UNITS beneath. Two facsimile signatures of bank officials appear at the lower left, with the printed designation of their respective titles. |
| Reverse lettering | THE CENTRAL BANK OF CHINA 5000 FIVE THOUSAND CUSTOMS GOLD UNITS 5000 |
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| Comments |
The Customs Gold Unit — Haikwan Liang in older parlance — was a notional accounting unit originally used to calculate import duties, revived in 1930 as a managed currency peg intended to stabilize trade revenues against silver fluctuations. By 1947, when this 5000-unit note was issued, the peg had long since collapsed under wartime fiscal pressure, and the denomination itself signals how badly the broader Nationalist monetary system had deteriorated.
The Central Printing Factory was the Republic of China's primary state press, responsible for an enormous volume of emergency-issue paper through the late 1940s. Notes from this period frequently show uneven ink distribution and variable registration, not as defects but as the expected output of a facility printing under impossible demand.